Hope's Second Rising
by Cassie's Bedlam
Summary: She died, she knows she did, and yet here she is in Marvel Movie-verse, in the hands of Hydra, with a different face, body and kind of different eyes. She can't remember her name so she dubs herself Hope, so she remembers to belief for freedom and survival. This is her story. Basically a self-insert story.
1. Chapter 1

_Most people were afraid to die, to be erased from life and becoming nothing more than fading memories—they crave to make a mark on the world, to be remembered long after everyone that loved them die, to be immortal in death and over such bullshit._

_Me? I was never that afraid of dying, living scared me a lot more. Death meant the end, the end of pain, suffering and everything else. Living was filled with pain, heart-ache, and other horrible things that was part of living, at least in death you were free from all that—or that was the theory anyway. _

_Turns out, Death was as big a bitch as Life was—which sucks major balls by the way._

* * *

Pain, agony, suffering, etc. she was feeling all of that and more. Her body screamed at her in pain, in distress, that something was seriously wrong with her but she couldn't move, couldn't even whimper, let alone scream, in pain—didn't she already die? Why was she still feeling such agony?

A heavy blow caught her side and her throat seized and burnt as a shrill scream was torn from it. She heaved choking sobs, eyes blind by an angry and pained red filter as she attempted to curl in on herself—she could barely hear men's voices over her choked sobs.

"She's still alive,"

"Was she the cause of the signal?"

"Has to be,"

"We'll take her back then."

A rough hand gripped her left arm hard, she screeched in pain as it felt like her bones were being forced out of her flesh only to been knocked out by a heavy blow to her head.

* * *

_My first moments of my new life was filled with suffering—I hoped it wasn't setting the tone for the rest of my second life, no matter how short it may turn out to be. _

_I didn't know if I would receive any kindness from the men that had took me, I doubted it, and I had no idea where I was._

_I had cried more in the few minutes they had conversed over me, like I was nothing more than an animal, than I had in years—I had always hated crying, when I was young I was always quick to tears as I was over-emotional as a brat, as a teenager and adult though, my emotions were more detached and I only truly cried once or twice a year, more often than not my eyes would leak with tears though I wasn't even the slightest upset which I found rather annoying._

_I'm not embarrassed to tell you that my last thought as my consciousness faded was of my mother, her fierce pale blue eyes and her stubbornness—which I had been told I had inherited, just like I had inherited my father's so I had a double dose—and I swore I would survive whatever they threw at me, if only for her._

* * *

Consciousness was clawing at her mind, telling her it was time to wake up and face the world, and she attempted to groan only to choke on what felt like a tube shoved down her throat.

Blindly—she wasn't ready to face her fate—she reached up with her right hand and felt for the tape that was most likely keeping the tube attached to her—she remembered the horrible and irritating feeling when she had been ten or eleven and had been in hospital recovering from appendicitis (she had been two days away from death as she had been too stubborn to tell the doctors how much it really hurt) and her stomach swelled for no reason and the doctors wanted to find out why—and peeled away from her cheek before pulling the tube swiftly from her nose—the nurse had been horrified when she had done it herself when she was a child after she slapped her hands away from her face—with sheer determination.

"Looks like sleeping beauty has decided to wake," came a guy's snarky voice—it seemed almost muffled.

"Be quiet Pietro," chided a gentler girl's voice—clearer than the guy's voice, but still slightly muffled. "She been through a lot, she doesn't need your snide remarks."

"Haven't we all, Wanda?" Pietro said before falling silent.

The names tickled at the back of her mind and she decided she had to stop being a coward and face the world.

A dirty-white ceiling above her, the corner of her eye caught the dull look of metal and she tilted her head to the read to peer at the sink and toilet that met her gaze, they had kindly left a metal cup on the sink if she wanted to drink—her mouth felt dryer than a desert (she refused to even think of the cruder saying that some of her friends had a habit of saying, they nearly always involved a Nun) and her throat felt like sand-paper.

She attempted to brace herself on her left arm so she could leaver herself up on the camp-bed, only to pause as she didn't feel the rather rough material under her left arm—she had been dressed in a vest from what she could feel—and swallowed before turning her wary gaze on to her left arm—which had to be still there as she felt it move—and bit back a scream though she let out a string of curses at the gleaming silver arm that winked back at her in the dim light.

They had cut off her arm and replaced it with a silver arm! Was they trying to make her look like a Winter Soldier wannabe or cosplayer? Were these types of freaks people that decided to pretend to be Hydra—why the fuck they wanted to be messed up Nazis she didn't know or care as she had seen people dress up as the Akatsuki and they were all S-Class murdering criminal ninja before so she knew there was always some fans that wanted to be the bad-guy—and decided they needed their own Winter Soldier? Didn't they realise she was the wrong fucking gender! Sure she used to be mistaken as a boy with her short hair when she was a preteen but she had grown breasts for fuck's sake! They were C-cup on a good day! She wasn't flat-chested anymore!

"Impressive," Pietro whistled lowly tearing her attention from her silver—fucking silver and metal and not flesh like it was supposed to be—arm and her curses to look for him and finally took in the rest of her 'room' as she pushed herself up on the bed.

She was in a glass cell—Glass! Clear! Which meant people would be able to watch her piss and such—and she could see in the cell next to her was a pretty girl with dark long hair that was curled slightly and dark maybe greenish eyes dressed in a horrible grey dress, next to the girl's, Wanda's, cell was Pietro with dark streaked heavily with white and greenish eyes too staring at her with a hint of a smirk and a horrible click happened in the back of her mind as she stared with growing horror at Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch—they were actual twins and not two cosplayers.

(She would admit that Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson had a great alikeness to the characters they had played at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, though these two were obviously related as they shared similar features and at the moment younger)

"How the fuck is this my life?" she asked herself, her voice horribly hoarse.

"I ask the same every day," Pietro smirked at her before blurring so he was a close to the glass that separated him from his twin and could see her more clearly—yep, they were the real deal.

The squeak of the tap being turned made her snap her head to her sink only to see it turning by itself before the cup caught the gushing water—which she was relieved to see was clean—before being shut off as the cup flew towards her.

She glanced at Wanda, whose eyes were narrowed in focus as she directed her hands, before she took the cup with both of her hands.

"Thank you," she said before she took a small sip which turned into a large gulp.

"Be careful," Wanda warned. "If you drink too fast, you'll be sick. You're body has gotten used to being feed by the tube."

She slowed herself down and set a dark glance at the tube she had carelessly threw to the side, its clear insides were filled with what she supposed was liquidised food.

"Yum," she grimaced when she forced herself to put her cup down slightly.

Pietro let out a short laugh.

"I like this one," he told Wanda. "She's has spirit."

* * *

_Wanda gave me the first kindness in this new life. I didn't really know her fate, not fully as I had still been waiting impatiently for Age of Ultron before my untimely death and sort-of rebirth, but I swore that I wouldn't forget her small act of kindness._

* * *

"How long have I been here?" she asked, her side leaning against the glass that kept her separated from Wanda, her gaze on her third cup of water.

"Two weeks," Wanda told her with quiet sympathy in her gaze. "This is the first time you've fully waken up."

"Why am I not in pain?" she asked the question that had been bugging her since she first woke up, especially when she saw her shiny new arm, and remembered the agony that she had been in before they knocked her out.

"They pumped you with old Soldier's blood and experimented with some other peoples' blood," Pietro told her as he leaned against his glass wall, muscles very visible with his arms crossed over his broad chest. "You are now the proud owner of rapid-healing, even puts old Soldier's to shame as they messed you up badly just to see how well you healed—one doctor said it was a shame they gave you the new arm before the blood."

Like Wolverine's healing, she couldn't help but think. Cool power that didn't do anything to stop the pain, she wondered if it would slow her aging to basically non-existent or if she was getting ahead of herself.

"Why would I be proud?" she couldn't help the bitter certainness in her voice. "It'll only make me their favourite with whatever weird-ass experiments they want to do."

Wanda's lips pursed as she levitated some blocks while Pietro gave her an assessing look.

"You're smart too," he seemed approving. "What's your name?"

"It's—"her mouth shut with a click of her teeth because she couldn't remember her name and panic began to swell like a balloon in her chest—what was her name? Why couldn't she remember her mother calling her by her name? Why couldn't she remember anyone calling her by her name?—"I can't remember."

Wanda gave her a sad smile and Pietro kept his silence for once.

"I'm sure it'll come back," Wanda's tone was as unconvinced as she was deep down. "Or you could always chose a new name?"

* * *

_Names are funny things aren't they? You don't really think they matter that much till you lose yours, but isn't that the story of everything? I once was bored enough to look up what it meant._

_Name, noun: A word or set of words by which a person or thing is known, addressed, or referred to. _

_Wanda and Pietro had their names, they had another name to that'll the world will one day know. Bucky Barnes—stuck in his frozen box—had a name, the Winter Soldier, though he didn't yet remember is real name—he would one day, when he came face to face with his best friend._

_Me? I had no name, I couldn't remember the name that my dad chose for me and took my mum six-months to learn how to say it right, the name that I got used to teachers saying wrong, and the name I once wanted to change because people found it so difficult to say and remember. I was just she for now._

_Everyone had a name, something no-one could really take away, accept me it seemed._

* * *

There was a mirror in her cell, she had to clean it to be able to see her reflection and when she did, she had to pause and stare.

She used to have brown eyes, she knew. How many times had her mum said that they were just like her dad's? They had been a deep brown which she liked to think looked like they had an amber tint in some light while in others they looked like deep pools of chocolate—they most likely didn't and it had just been her wishful thinking—and sometimes she was sure there was a hint of blue in them.

She could remember complaining once to her mum that she wanted her eyes, blue eyes like her half-brother had and her nephew had. A pale blue that was like the pale pretty clear blue sky when happy but looked like shards of coloured ice when angry.

It seemed her wish was finally granted, in a way at least.

Her right eye was the pale blue that her mum's was while the left was her normal dark brown. She had heterochromia eyes now. To her they would be a reminder of her parents—the mother being the only person she had been certain she loved and the father long dead and thought of in indifference instead of betrayed hurt and anger he used to be thought of in, both were fighters in their own way though Dad's had been more obvious when he had cancer—and of her old life and she hoped it would give her the strength needed to survive whatever hell Hydra decided to put her through.

Her hair was different too. Still the same dark brown shade that she was used too—made darker because of all the times she had dyed her hair black—but was longer—no-longer just brushing past her chin and her shoulders in the back—as it brushed her shoulder-blades and had the curl that her mum's had.

Her skin was still pale—she had once been told that snowmen had more colour than she did, but had thankfully never been compared to the Cullens—though her features were different, less round with a more almost pixie-like look to them—wider eyes, upturned small nose, full-ish lips, heart-shaped face—and she had lost the extra two inches of height that she had been so proud of gaining when she should have stopped growing, reducing her to a petite five foot three inches.

The vest was an old grey colour—they had taken her bra just in case she decided to use it as a weapon (the image that passed through her mind made her lips twitch in an effort not to laugh) and she was glad she had small perky breasts (which Mum had often complained about never having) though she was annoyed that she had to keep adjusting the top as it was at least one size too big—and some old jogging trousers that she had drawn tightly and knotted so they stayed on her rather slim hips—she hadn't been magically blessed with killer-curves in her second-life which she was okay with as she thought it was over-rated really and she didn't enjoy a lot of male attention, too much time spent watching crime shows, and it was always good to be underestimated which she would with her petite height and rather youthful look.

* * *

_I had no name, when I looked into the mirror a stranger stared back and I was in the hands of Hydra. My second-life fuckin' sucked at the moment. Please get better?_

* * *

There was only one door to her cell in the only actual wall of the cell—it was the wall with the sink and toilet attached to it—and had a little flap for them to shove a plastic tray of food in—no cutlery in case they attempted to used it on themselves—and the food was such a stereotype that part of her despaired silently.

A lump of white bread—an actual lump that had been torn from a loaf of bread—a bowl of warm soup though they were kind enough to make sure they were given carrot-sticks and apple-slices with their meal.

Normally, she was the pickiest eater on the planet but she didn't have that luxury anymore so she decided to get the worse out of the way and gulped down the soup—she hated soup—before turning her attention to the only three things she liked.

It was as she crunched on a carrot-stick that she decided on a name.

"Hope," she said to herself.

"What was that?" Wanda asked as she nibbled on a slice of apple.

"I want to be called Hope," she told her fellow prisoner.

Pietro snorted from his place sprawled on his camp-bed—his tray already empty as he didn't do things at normal pace like other people.

"Really? Hope?" he asked with an overwhelming amount of incredulous in his tone. "That's what you've come up with."

"Pietro," Wanda chided with a frown.

"I don't want to forget to hope, I don't want to give it up either," she explained to the twins softly and Pietro didn't shot a comment back.

"I think it's a pretty name, Hope," Wanda smiled at her through the glass before returning to her meal.

The newly named Hope smiled as she crunched into her last carrot-stick.

* * *

_Hope, noun: a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen, a feeling of trust._

_Hope, verb: want something to happen or be the case._

_The meaning of the name Hope was 'expectation, belief'._

_Was it an unimagined name? Sure, but I hoped it kept me believing that things would get better in the end. That this couldn't be what my second-life would always be, could it?_

* * *

**AN: So this is my very first self-insert fic, probably won't up date this for a bit as I want to pump out at least another chapter for Uzumaki Treasure today. Please let me know what you think.**

**Cassie x**


	2. Chapter 2

_I had read the occasional self-insert fan fiction in the past—they would always make themselves out as bad-asses that never get seriously hurt or killed when in tricky situations as they are the main character and authors didn't often kill of their main character._

_They write themselves as indifferent, calculating to a degree or having a temper—they almost always added humour to the stories. They write about their epic friendships with the main characters, or just their favourites, or how they change the plot because they are one of the main characters and know the future—I had even read one when the self-insert accidently changed things when she hadn't meant to and how she was afraid to be the rather weak and useless twit the character's body she was possessing was in canon and I had read a self-insert that made Bella Swan likeable and not the stupid spineless twit in the books that made me want to tear my hair out._

_They don't truly write about the overwhelming fear that turns you numb when you realise you are in one of your favourite dangerous bits of fiction—especially when you know what shit-storm is going to hit you in the future—and how you dimly realise that you was never going to see the people you love ever again—they tended to gloss over that as they have new families and loved ones etc. _

_They don't write horrible scenes where they are tortured or close to death as it's them they are writing about—a writers' imagination is a double-edged sword and they rarely want to think of themselves in that position and people hate to be helpless full stop._

_They never write about being found by the enemy, the villain, as they are always part of the hero's life and train their little asses off to be totally bad-ass when they needed to be. _

_Why would they? It's a piece of fiction filled with them being bad-ass and such (yeah, I realise I'm repeating myself but I like describing them as bad-ass, sue me) and it's not like it was reality._

_At the moment I fuckin' hated those writers as I was dealing with the reality of being thrust into one of my favourite movies as well as being in the hands of the villains—Hydra, why the fuck did I land in the damned Avengers' verse? Why couldn't I have been reborn in Scooby-Doo and chase after fake bad-guys with the lovable talking Great Dane? _

_It was a sad day indeed when I realised I could only think of Scooby-Doo as being the only honest-to-god safe verse out of all of the films and programmes I watch as well as the books I read, nobody could claim that Harry Potter-verse was safe—they had legal love-potions and Voldemort—and Yu-Gi-Oh regularly dealt with people duelling for their souls over a card game, though I could perhaps fade into the background in Death-Note as I would have no intention of calling either Light's or L's attention to me—call me a coward, I don't give a damn. I like being alive thank you very much._

* * *

Hope knew it would be naïve to think that Hydra would leave her alone for a couple of days, let her come to terms with the fact that she was in their hands—in another world all together—and that she would never see her mum again.

(They were once a Nazi group, they weren't remembered as being nice and considerate to their prisoners.)

But she hoped that they would be occupied by their other prisoners in glass cells in the circular room—there was an operating table in the middle of the room with medical tables, it was in perfect view of all the cells—but she was new and fresh meat.

Wanda had advised her not to fight when they came for her, told her that it made worse for her in the end, and they would delight in roughing her up to get her strapped to that table.

Logically she knew she shouldn't fight, logically she had decided she wouldn't.

Logic flew out of the window when her door opened and two towering men made their way in and panic and fear took root as her flight or fight instinct went wild—she couldn't flee, they were blocking the only door so her body automatically began to fight when they reached out for her.

She screamed—in fear or defiance, she wasn't too sure and it could have been a mixture of both—as she lashed out of them with a balled fist—she had lashed out with her left arm.

Hope was five foot three inches and had seen sticks that were thicker than her arms, she was so skinny that one could count most of her ribs when she breathed in, and had no fighting experience at all—she shouldn't have been a threat, and she wouldn't have been if they hadn't decided to hack of her left-arm and replace it with a metal one.

So the sickening snap of bones wasn't the bones in her hand breaking from a poorly thrown punch, it was the nose of the man that had stupidly forgot about the arm as he reached out with malice in his eyes.

Hoots, hollers and cheers came from the other prisoners as they watched one of their guards fall back from a tiny slip of a girl with a string of curses and an obviously broken nose.

The other guard was smart and simple shot her with a taser-gun, and she yelled as her whole body went rigid painfully and she fell, her head was shaking and her eyes rolling as bolts of electric surged through her body and straight to her left arm.

The guard didn't attempt to touch her left arm—which was a pity as she wanted to see how he liked be shot with electric—and instead dragged her by her feet out of her cell and around until she was beside the op-table, there he actually picked her up by the front of her clothes and slammed her on the table with no mercy and cuffs snapped around her slender ankles and wrists automatically.

"Arsehole," she hissed between clenched teeth.

He just smirked down at her, dark eyes amused, before walking away without a care.

"A British girl, how nice!" an aged male voice sounded delighted and she stiffened as he appeared beside her in a stark white lab-coat—he was a tall and skinny man with long spider-leg fingers.

Silver hair was cropped short and neatly brushed, square-specs sat on his slightly too large nose as cold grey eyes—they reminded her of snake-eyes—stared down at her with detached interest which was out of odds with the wide smile on his wrinkled face. He of course had a German accent, probably been around from the start of Hydra considering the wrinkles and age-spots that littered his weathered skin.

"It has been a long time since I've had a British patient," he smiled at her cheerfully, it still didn't reach his eyes, before he began looking at a file like she really was just a patient and him a doctor. "I'm Doctor Duerr, and I'll be your doctor."

"I don't need a doctor," she told him, hoping that her fear wasn't audible in her voice and cursing that she had such a pathetically soft voice that couldn't even make a poodle-puppy listen to her—she knew from experience sadly.

"They always say that," he absently said. "But I help them become better than they were before."

"Haven't you done that already?" she jingled her left arm meaningfully.

"I've just started, dear Hope," he said and she flinched at hearing her new name—it was hers and no one was taking it away again—come from his thin pale lips. "It's a nice name you have chosen for yourself."

Hope remained silent as she stared up at him.

"Let's see," Doctor Duerr spoke idly to himself. "Subject: Hope—we really should give you a surname—Age: between fifteen and twenty years of age—I doubt you'll enlighten me of your true age, no?—Height: Five foot and three inches exactly. Weight: 111 pounds—tsk, it's your lowest ideal weight for your height, and I'll have to remind them to up your food intake— Ops already done: left arm amputated and replaced with cybernetic arm, blood-transfusion from Subject Winter Soldier—seemed to have successfully retained rapid-healing from experiments during the transfusion at a much higher-rate than the Soldier's healing-ability—let's see how we can improve on that in the future, shall we? But first we must assess the strength."

She hated that sick grin on his face, she decided as she watched him ready a needle with ominous coloured liquid.

"First with poison," Doctor Duerr informed as he sipped the needle into her straining right arm.

* * *

_I don't know what poison he decided to start with and I really don't want to know. All I knew was it burnt, gave me a fever and made me horribly sick—it was only the start of his tests, there was a lot of different poisons in the world, you know?_

_Some gave me fevers so high that I would hallucinate, some would make me seize and tremble as I lost control of my nerves, some caused me so much pain I screamed till I was spitting blood, some just made me sick till nothing but bile and blood came up with each choked heave that burnt my throat and nose—but as time went on and more poisons were injected into my veins, that had turned an angry inflamed red through my pale skin, it was easier to throw the effects off and didn't make half-as-sick as I had once been._

_All the while, the doctor watched and wrote down notes with detached interest and cold snake-eyes—dear Odin and Thor, I hate that man and would happily watch Loki slaughter him or the Hulk smash him to a blood-spatter._

* * *

Modesty didn't last long in the cells where one could hear and watch the other prisoners piss and such and the showers were large, open and wasn't separated by gender—Hydra, for some reason or another, had removed all unnecessary hair from the female prisoners' body permanently which Hope didn't mind as she didn't have to bother shaving anymore which was a plus.

Her first shower was awkward and slightly frightening as the guards marched them to the changing room connected to the large shower room.

Hope and Wanda were the only women in the group of ten prisoners and had to deal with leers and such as they stripped out of their clothes and placed them on a shelf ready to be taken while they were in the shower and replaced by clean clothes.

Her movements had been jerky with how nervous she was and Wanda grabbed her hand to reassure her while Pietro loomed beside them and glowered at all the men that gave the two women a lustful look—no matter what powers they had, Pietro was faster and fiercer when protecting his twin, and now Hope too, so they backed off and just leered at them and making crude movements to show the two women just how much they wanted them and exactly what they wanted to do to them if given the chance.

Pietro had shuffled them into a corner and Wanda had made sure Hope was in the corner before the showers turned on and Pietro kept his eye out on any of the men that could attempt something stupid as they washed the sweat and such away.

* * *

_I foresee me getting into trouble if for some reason Pietro and Wanda aren't with me during shower time. _

_The seven men I had to worry about had powers, offensive powers, and all I had was a passive power of self-healing—which meant when they were through with me, I would be able to heal up like nothing happened though I would always remember._

_The only thing I had on my side was a metal arm—which was useless as I didn't know how to fight and it was obvious that the men had some sort of combat training with how they moved and the muscles they were packing. _

_Till I find a way to learn how to fight, I best stick with Pietro and Wanda._

* * *

"Dear Hope, is there something we can get you for you to pass your free-time with?" Doctor Duerr asked as he poked his fingers into an incision he made on her abdomen which made her hiss a breath out between clenched teeth.

"I want to know how to fight," she grimaced as she felt him wiggle his fingers inside her for a moment before pulling them out and watching the incision close with detached curiosity.

"Hmm, that would a useful skill for you to know," Doctor Duerr agreed as he reached for his pen with his blood stained gloved hand. "I would hate for something to happen to you before I can unlock your full potential."

He wrote down a few quick notes.

"It'll take time for anything to be arranged for you, so what can I get you in the mean time?" Doctor Duerr asked again.

Some would think he was being kind, Hope already knew better. The doctor had seen how bored she was getting when she wasn't fighting off poison affects or being cut into, a bored mind wasn't a good thing for a prisoner to have—they may start to get dangerous ideas of attempting to escape, and the doctor hated when his patients attempted to escape as they often had to be put-down according to Pietro and Wanda.

"Books," Hope settled on.

"A reader, huh? How nice for someone to want to expand their horizons," he smiled down at her like a pleased grandfather and her right hand balled into a fist—her mother used to say that. "What type of books?"

"Horror, supernatural," she shrugged as best she could. "I heard about a set of books called the Percy Jackson and the Olympians maybe coming out soon."

"I'll get people to look for them," he promised.

* * *

_The next day I got a brand-new copy of the Lightning Thief but it didn't have a list of the other books I knew was in the series so I was sure it was 2005—which meant time-travel, yay!—and gave me five years before the Avengers' timeline started in my opinion—I didn't watch any of the Hulk movies, so the Avengers' timeline would always start in 2010 with Ironman._

_Thankfully it was in English—I wouldn't put it passed them to be amused with watching me struggle to read German or French from the dim memories I had of reading the book as they all knew I didn't know any language apart from English. (Wanda was helping me learn German, Pietro didn't have the patience to teach someone German as normal people were just so slow next to him—there was a reason why he was near bouncing off walls when they didn't give him something new)_

_And I was able to lose myself in the world of Percy Jackson—I was really glad I wasn't thrown in that world, I had enough to deal with human monsters here that I didn't want to learn how to deal with real monsters there._

* * *

The cell on the other side of Hope's was empty which she was completely happy with as it meant that she didn't have to deal with a pervert watching her go toilet—it didn't stay empty for long after her request to learn how to fight.

Her new neighbour was Bucky Barnes and he was going to teach her how to fight and defend herself—which meant she would be getting her ass handed to her regularly till she learnt to fight back.

Their first meeting was interesting and really set the tone for the rest of their lessons.

* * *

The training room reminded her of an underground bunker with exercise mats covering the floor—there was a few punching-bags hanging from the ceiling over to the side.

"Soldier this is Hope," a guard, Alex, gestured between them. "You'll be teaching her to fight."

And he left the room which made Hope shift awkwardly under Bucky's—it was his name and she was going to use it if only in her mind—gaze.

"Do you have any experience fighting?" he asked as he began to circle her with an assessing look.

"Ah, no," she answered as he poked her right arm.

"Did you play sports?" he asked as he frowned at the thinness of her real arm.

"P.E wasn't really a subject I regularly attended," she told him with a shrug.

"What happened here?" he asked as he tapped her metal arm with his own metal fingers which gave a metallic ping at the contact.

"My arm must have been really messed up and they decided to give me a new one."

Truthfully, Hope didn't know what state her arm had been that made them decided to amputate her arm, Pietro and Wanda refused to tell her the exact state she had been in when she had been brought in. Pietro had simply told her that she had been in a fucked-up state and she should just focus on the fact she was alive and basically healthy now—which wasn't reassuring at all.

"Hmm," he said thoughtfully as he continued circling her.

A heavy blow made her fall flat-on her face with a pained sound.

"First lesson, always stay on your guard," he told her as he crouched down beside her as she pushed herself up.

He held out a hand and she took it, he pulled her up slightly before releasing her making her land on her ass with a deep exhale of breathe.

"Second, never trust your opponent," he smirked down at her annoyed face.

"Right," she grumbled slightly as she pushed herself up and on to her feet.

* * *

_Bucky Barnes was a bastard, but at least he was teaching me something useful. At least I hope he was actually teaching me and not just having fun knocking me on my ass._


	3. Chapter 3

_When I was six, I was running through the playground one-day after one of the few friends I had when her brother accidently rammed into me and sent me flying—I cut up my knee very badly and it bled a lot._

_In my mind—consumed with pained hysteria—there was a hole right through my knee. Of course I knew now I was being silly and Duerr let me experience what a hole in the knee felt—be it from a metal spike or a bullet—all in the name of raising my pain threshold._

_In my first life gave me a rather high threshold of pain, I was a sickly child and was used to almost constant pain and such—I was even confined to a wheelchair if I wanted to move long distances as the pain in my legs just wouldn't let me walk far._

_Still my threshold wasn't high enough to cope with Duerr's experiments—yet._

* * *

Hope felt a kinship to the corpses on the metal-tables of the morgue as she stared with macabre interest at the mirror that Duerr had 'kindly' put above her.

As usual, her arms and ankles were clamped in place though this time she had been given a sedative that made her unable to move and unnaturally calm.

He had cut a Y-incision in her torso, pulled back her flesh and clamped them in place before he took large-cutters to her ribs before removing the top of her ribcage and just peering at as her heart and lungs moved to keep her alive and writing notes—constant notes.

Part of her should have felt horror, part of her should feel sick as she had never really liked the sight of blood, but the time she had sent in this hell had dulled her emotions more than they already had been.

How long had she been here? A month, two? Four? Eight? She didn't know and part of her didn't want to know just how long she had been in Duerr's hands and under his needles and scalpel.

Finally Duerr must have gotten bored as he placed her ribs back in place and they both watched in interest as the bones mended back together before he did the same with her skin—she never needed stitches anymore—her rapid-healing seemed to get stronger every-time Duerr had his fun as well as faster.

* * *

_There was ten prisoners at first when I woke up, Bucky being woken up and brought to train me had upped the number to eleven—it was taken down back to ten when one of the prisoners killed himself._

_Wanda told me that he had been brought in, kicking and screaming, a few days before I was brought in. His name was Simon and he had been lucky not to be experimented on much before I was found and Duerr forgot about him in his excitement over me—lucky me, huh? _

_But Bucky had been firm that if they wanted me to be able to fight then Doctor Duerr couldn't play with me as much as he had been doing—I have a feeling that they want to turn me into another Winter Soldier—and Doctor Duerr's gaze fell back on Simon._

_I was woken up one day to him frantically beating at his mirror, glass shards digging into his balled fists, and he was almost screaming as he did._

* * *

"Giving up kid?" Viktor, a fellow prisoner with an almost superhuman level of strength, goaded with a sneer on his harsh features.

Viktor was the more vocal about desire of Hope and Wanda, Bucky broke his nose when he made a grab for her when he was close-by—Viktor's strength had nothing against Bucky's, especially when he used his metal arm.

Bucky stood with his arms crossed over his board-bare chest with a frown as he watched Simon beat at the mirror, his discarded top on his bed. Wanda kept her gaze on her own mirror as she brushed her teeth fiercely with resolve and Pietro was just shaking his head in disgust at Simon's frantic behaviour.

"What's he doing?" Hope asked thickly, keeping her blankets tight around her as she stared across the room at the cell that Simon had been kept in.

"He's taking the coward's way out," Pietro sneered in contempt.

"What?" she asked in sleepy confusion.

"He's going to kill himself," Bucky clarified for her sleep-addled mind, deep disprovable clear in his tone.

"Don't watch," Wanda met her mismatched eyes with deep resolve and grimness in her dark green ones. "You don't want to remember it, trust me."

"Do as she says," Bucky told her firmly.

Hope turned away with her blanket tucked around her and reached for the Lightning Thief to attempt to distract her from Simon's desperate screams and the smashing of his fists.

* * *

_No guards came to stop him, the men watched while Wanda and I kept our attention away as Simon used a shard of glass to slit his wrists though all of us heard his sob of relief when he finally got a large enough and sharp enough shard free. _

_The guards only came when his body was beginning to cool and dragged him out by his feet. They took out his bed and hosed down his cell before replacing the bed and mirror—it was like nothing happened in there._

_Duerr hadn't been happy with Simon's suicide. Duerr was the power that decided if we lived or died and he hated people that undermined his power by taking their own lives._

_We lost two more in the following two weeks under Duerr's hands—unfortunately the Doctor didn't kill Viktor or his two minions so Wanda and I still had to suffer their leers and such when we shower._

* * *

"You're healing ability is remarkable, I haven't anyone heal this fast before," Duerr smiled at her like he had given her a great compliment with her blood strayed across his face from when he had slit her throat and gun still smoking in his hand from when he had blown her brains out just to see if she could survive her brain being destroyed and what affect it would have on her after she healed, if she healed—his smile still didn't reach his snake-like eyes.

Her throat still hurt from the blade near beheading her with Duerr's enthusiasm so she just smiled tightly in response—she had learnt it was best to be placid with Duerr, to let him have his fun instead of fighting him—he always made it hurt worse if you dared to fight him—and in reward he would get the guards to bring them things that they wanted—books, real chocolate from England that wasn't too sickly sweet like American chocolate or bitter like the rest of Europe's chocolate, and had even been generous enough to give her a DS with a Pokémon game—she had decided if she got a third life that she wanted to be reborn in the Pokémon world, she didn't frankly care if it was game-verse or anime-verse really, she deserved to have a real damn Pokémon after all this shit.

It didn't mean that her fire was gone, oh no! she just used it against guards, that touched what they shouldn't, and against Viktor when he attempted to make her cower and bend to his will—The Winter fuckin' Soldier was teaching her to fight, Viktor was a first-class idiot to think he could make her bend easily to his will after a few weeks of being beat down by Bucky's fists all in the name of teaching her.

"Let's start playing with your strength and speed, shall we?" Duerr asked rhetorically as he fiddled with vials that she was sure was filled with different versions of their own super-serum.

* * *

_There was only two scars that I ever gained in my first life. A dent (the size of my middle finger tip) in my forehead—right under the hairline—from when I was a toddler with chicken-pox and dug it out with my meaty toddler fingers. The other came from my appendicitis, a scar the size of one of my fingers, and cut into the muscle funny and pulled inwards so I would never have a properly flat belly._

_In my second life I gained a mess of scars around where the silver arm joined the rest of my flesh body, a mess of vein-like scars that were jagged from under my left armpit, up my left collar-bone and down my left shoulder-blade to join under the armpit once again. _

_I should have more scars though; track marks up and down my arms from all the blood taken and the poisons and drugs pumped into me, five-cm length scars littering my abdomen from Duerr's attempts to up my threshold of pain, a deep scar across my throat that had cut open my vocal-cords and made me choke on blood until it healed, a burn of the gun's muzzle that put a bullet through my brain, Y-cut scar on my torso, a series of puckered holes on my knees from when spikes and bullets were put in them, the same with the palm of my hands and a deep scar of my chest from one of the guard's knifes when I wouldn't let him have his way with me and fought back—he stabbed me near the heart, confident that it would stop me, but it hardly slowed me down as rage and fear made me lash out like an animal, he was my first kill._

_When Bucky, followed more sedately by a few other guards and Duerr, I was huddled against the wall with wide eyes, flesh hand curled tightly around the handle of the knife, clothes torn and covered in blood—my blood and his—with a small puddle of bile off to the side._

_Bucky's face could have been made of stone as he crouched beside me and helped me towards the showers and kept his silence as he washed me as my hands shook too much for me scrub the blood off myself. He walked me back to my cell and lay a comforting kiss on my forehead before pushing lightly to enter the safety of my cell, my room._

_Duerr was pleased with what I did and the guards didn't attempt to punish me—I had the sick feeling that they had watched what happened and only decided to do something when they were sure it was over and he was dead by my hand._

* * *

Hope knew that she had been with Hydra over a year when the shiny brand-new copy of Sea of Monsters were slid through her flap one day.

She had sat on the floor and held the book in her mismatched hands—which matched her mismatched eyes—and stroked the glossy cover with her unfeeling left thumb as tears blurred her vision.

April 1st 2006. That was when Sea of Monster's was first published, her birthday was March 4th and had passed her by without her even knowing it.

Wanda wasn't in the cell next to her to give her soothing words—the twins had been moved somewhere last week—and only Bucky was really her friend in this place.

She could feel his blue gaze burning into the side of her face as her shoulders shook slightly and copper filled her mouth—she wasn't going to let anyone hear her cry in this place, she refused too—from her teeth tearing through her bottom lip.

She wasn't sure if it meant she was twenty-one now or if she had been de-aged during her looks being changed and being booted into the Avengers verse—her looks placed her anywhere from her mid-teens to her early twenties—but then again, did it really matter how old she was? She was still stuck in Hydra's hands, still under Duerr's control, was still being leered at by Viktor when they showered and still had a silver arm.

_I want to go home_, she thought as she stared down at the glossy cover. It wasn't a new thought, it was a regular thought that crossed her mind and it was a useless thought—there was no way home, she had died remember?, and there was no home in this fucked up world apart from her cell in Hydra which was more fucked up then her life was at that moment.

* * *

_Sometimes I dream of home, of laying on my sofa-bed with my laptop reading fan fiction and listening to the background noise of the TV with Mum either half-asleep on the couch, reading one of her books or watching TV._

_I dream of watching Master-chief with her and making her laugh with the faces I pull at the food because I disliked food almost all together. _

_I dream of tarmac, greenery and other cars passing by as Mum took me on another one of our mystery tours where we sometimes got lost—we once got lost in Bodmin._

_I dream of desperately clinging to sleep as Mum called at me to wake up and my poodle puppy jumping all over me to aid in making me get up. _

_I dream of us talking about what we would do if we won the lotto, of what house we would move in to and Mum laughing when I tell her seriously that I would still be living off her till she died. _

_I dream of Mum not being able to say Wolverine, of my sighing deeply with my eyes closed, of her mixing up Superman and Spiderman, of mistaking Thor for Watchmen, of her not knowing who the Avengers or X-men are. _

_I dream of her disapproving face when I reveal how much I spent on online comics and her stern look as she tells me I'm not allowed to buy anything more—I always do anyway._

_I dream of us going to the cinema to a film that she couldn't be bothered about but I want to watch, of her teasing me about falling asleep during the film and me reassuring her that I would poke her if she looked like she was falling asleep. _

_I dream of the single car-crash I have been in, what was my fault after only having the car five minutes as I didn't realise I was going faster with the new car than I did with my teacher's car. I dream of her relieved laugh that we were okay that scared me more than crashing, her continually laughs as we take the car back to get fixed and she sees my hands shaking madly. _

_I dream of going to the Theatre to watch crime plays, of eating ice-cream during half-time as we discuss who the killer is or if they'll get caught. _

_I dream of old water-fights during Christmas between me and my brother—nearly twenty-two years my senior—and the scarring sight of our Gran ripping off her dress when I accidently soaked her with a cup of water instead of my brother, of her rubbing the wet dress on my face despite me hiding behind Mum, of my brother's pale face which turned a hint of green when Mum commented that at least she had been wearing a bra when he declared he was scarred for life._

_But then I always wake up and am hit with the cold-hard facts. Gran's dead, I'm dead to them and in a whole new world and life to me, and I would never see my Mum or my annoying brother again._

_Sometimes all I want to do is curl up under my blankets and have a good cry—despite the fact I hate crying—but I don't. I can't show any more weakness than I already have, especially with Duerr upping my strength and speed as I gain and kept muscle mass, and I'm too stubborn to let myself become a weeping-mess._

_I think Mum would be proud of that._

* * *

SHIELD attacked the cars that were taking her to a new place—turns out she had been in America all this time—and Hope simply played Pokémon as guns sounded and Hydra and SHIELD clashed—not that they knew they were Hydra as they were dressed in plain black uniform.

Truly, she was getting too detached to the world if she could easily play Pokémon in the middle of a mini war-zone and not blinking when the doors of where she was being kept suddenly opened—exposing her to too much sun—and about a dozen guns being focused on where she sat in the little padded cage with her backpack of books next to her and dressed in her normal grey uniform of a vest, trousers and tennis shoes.

"Miss?" the bland voice of Phil Coulson—The Badass Motherfucker that was Agent Coulson—made her look up.

"Hold for a moment," she cut him off as her gaze pointedly moved back to the screen of her DS—yeah, she was going to act like a teenager, which she possible could be and never really grew out of—"I'm in a very important Pokémon battle."

She would later swear that she made at least one of the SHIELD agents staring at her snigger at her response to the guns facing her and such—bet-cha not everyone acted so casual as she did with guns staring her right in the face and keep playing Pokémon, but too be fair she knew that they couldn't kill her with their guns.

Horribly hurt her? Yes. Make her hurt like hell? Yes. Kill her? Nope, Hydra had already proven that she was damn-near immortal—just like Wolverine so she hadn't been getting ahead of herself.

Plus it was hard to react properly after almost two years in Hydra's hands.

"Right," Coulson agreed in that mild voice of his—not the least be ruffled by her. "Can I least have your name?"

"Hope," she made it a point not to look up as she really was in a Pokémon battle—Pikachu would be hers damn it! And not even Phil Coulson would make her lose him!

* * *

_And that was how I came into the hands of SHIELD, I think it went a lot better than my first meeting with Hydra, don't you?_

_It was made epic by the simple fact that Coulson was there and was the one who found me obviously. _

_(I did, in fact, catch the Pikachu if anyone wondered and I dubbed him Thor—I was so showing him that if I ever meet him)_


	4. Chapter 4

_I would recommend being born into your second-life—sure it'll be boring and humiliating having someone feed you, change you, wash you and such at least you'll have a paper-trail._

_Something I didn't have—which put me in a tight spot with SHIELD. _

_They took my arm—they actually removed my left arm! The bastards! (It seemed that Hydra had attached the arm to my nerves as it hurt when they removed it)—took some blood—I still hate needles by the way—took my DS and my pokémon, took an x-ray from me—bet'cha they'll be surprised with the metal that's been grafted to my bones (Hugh Jackman underplayed how much it hurt and I really wanted to curse Duerr for turning me into the Winter Soldier's and Wolverine's love-child or basically a cyborg which wasn't as fun as people made it out) and shuffled me into a little room with a metal-table and metal-chairs and mirror walls for two whole hours._

* * *

Coulson wasn't surprised when he opened the door to find the girl, Hope, laying on the metal table and making obnoxious noises with her mouth to show how bored she was—he had been watching her since she had been shuffled into the room and he waited to see if there was anything to find about her and the results of her blood-tests and x-ray (the kid had been through a lot).

"If you please get off the table?" he asked as he walked towards the table.

She rolled her head to the side so she could pin him with annoyed mismatched eyes—he had never seen eyes that different in colour in his life—before with a sigh, she levered herself up with her arm—her right arm and her only arm—and slid down into the seat he had placed her in two hours ago.

"Now Hope," he began as he began to spread out the file they had collected on her—it was the thinnest file he had seen since joining SHIELD. "I'm Agent Coulson from Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."

"Do you ever get tired of saying that mouthful?" she seemed honestly curious as she stared at him. "Why not just shorten it to SHIELD and silently laugh as they try to figure out what it means?"

"I'll keep that in mind," he said as he marked something down in his notebook. "Is there a reason that your skeleton is metal?"

"It's not metal," she denied as she leaned back in her chair. "It's been grafted with metal and it's to make me more immortal than I already am since it's hard to easily cut through the metal of my neck and harder to pierce my heart."

"More immortal?" Coulson raised an eyebrow in question and she tilted her head as she stared at him.

"You've run my blood, surely you know," she said simply as the short nails of her fingers tapped at the metal table—he did know, her blood was basically toxic and it was amazing that she was still alive and fully functioning minus an arm. "I don't really know exactly all that was done to me, all I know was it hurt like fuck and I don't want to go through it again."

"You won't," he reassured her and a bitter smile twisted her lips—she looked too damn young to have such a look on her face.

"Sorry if I don't believe you," she shrugged her left shoulder—it looked very wrong for there to be no arm moving with it. "I've spent the last two years with men like you—dressed in black-uniforms, blank-faced as they follow orders—so I'm not really going to trust your word."

"Do you know who did this to you?" he asked gently and her eyes shone for a moment before they flickered around the room briefly and settled on him again.

"They didn't tell me," she chose her words carefully and Coulson knew that she knew who had taken her but she wouldn't say here—an alarming picture was starting to form in his mind as the phrase 'I've spent the last two years with men like you' echoed and how she had purposely glanced around to show she knew she was being watched and recorded and kept her silence.

His lips thinned briefly before he smoothed them out and her head tilted slightly to one side—it could be written off as curiosity as she studied him, an unconscious habit, but Coulson believed that she was attempting to confirm what he thought which meant there was something rotten in SHIELD—and her dark hair came out of her ponytail and framed her heart-shaped face.

"How old are you, Hope?" Coulson asked.

"I'm not sure," she told him.

"Is your name really Hope?" he asked.

"It's the name I chose for myself when I couldn't remember my real name," she answered.

"Did you know to the world you don't exist?"

"Then how am I here?"

"Isn't that the question?"

* * *

_Nothing much was said after that and I was shuffled again to somewhere else—this time an actual bedroom—with Hawkeye—the actual Agent Barton!—as my guard._

_(They gave me back my left arm thankfully, I was rather attached to it after all—yeah I know, it was a really bad joke)_

_He got me McDonalds and battled against me on pokémon, he asked me my favourite movies—lucky The Mummy had been out for years and I could wait to get up-to-date with the movies out now—and my favourite books—Percy Jackson at the moment—and other rather meaningless questions in a mildly interested voice so not to get my guard up obviously. _

_He answered the questions in turn easily—of course I probably never know if he was lying as he answered or not—between either losing to me on pokémon as he had obviously just started playing the game and my high-levels destroyed his still baby pokémon and nicking fries with lightning-fast movements with me attempting—and sometime successfully—slapping his hand away._

* * *

"Why are you acting all friendly to me?" Hope questioned as she flicked through the racks of t-shirts.

"Aren't we becoming friends?" Natasha asked in an almost innocent tone with a practiced smile on her lips that just reached her eyes.

"You're lying to me," Hope near-sung as she pulled out and peered at a dark vest-top. "You're like Fury, a spy and you don't trust me or like me."

"I like you," Natasha offered as she took the vest from Hope and added it to the pile—SHIELD, or really Coulson, had decided she needed more clothes and sent her shopping with Natasha.

"You know I can't tell if you're lying or not," Hope glanced at the red-head with her pale blue eye. "You're good."

"I like you," Natasha repeated. "I just don't trust you, but I hardly trust anyone so it's not personal."

"That actually makes me feel better," Hope smiled at the faint frown that creased Natasha's face. "I like you too, but I sure as hell don't trust you or anyone in SHIELD."

"That a good trait to have," Natasha approved.

Only a spy would approve of not trusting the people who apparently saved you and was housing you, and such. Then again, being distrusting must have been one of the things that kept them alive so long.

"Can I get a DVD-player and a bunch of DVDs?" Hope asked as she held a pair of jeans to her small frame.

"Sure," Natasha shrugged despite the fact that Coulson had sternly told them only to buy clothes.

* * *

_Yeah, I decided I liked Natasha. Especially when she let me buy the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy as it was at the moment, the first five Harry Potter movies, Transformers, Bridge to Terabithia, all the pokémon movies out as well as the Scooby-Doo movies (you are never too old for Scooby-Doo or Pokémon), Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty as well as a laptop. _

_She even picked up a Stark-player (which was basically an apple I-pod just with an SI on the back) and a $200 gift-card so I could buy music online and download it._

_It was all bought by SHIELD—it was very kind of them, don't'cha think?_

* * *

"I think like I should be whining about not wanting to go to school," Hope deadpanned as Coulson stopped the car outside the gates of Xavier's School for Higher Learning. "You guys realise I'm not a mutant, right? That everything that makes me 'special' came out a ton of bottles and such, right?"

"They'll still can teach you how to control your strength," he said as the gates opened.

"I can control my strength," she protested as the car smoothly drove forward.

"In Fury's words," Coulson began mildly. "You broke someone's jaw in two places with a love-tap."

"I thought that would be a good thing," she frowned at him as she twisted in her seat. "You guys want me to be an agent, right?"

"We don't want to break bones in friendly spars," he shot back shortly as he pulled to a stop in front of the steps.

"He was totally gunning for me though!" Hope protested. "I wouldn't call the hits he threw love-taps."

"You have grafted metal bones and heal abnormally fast," he pointed out drily. "He needed to hit you hard to make a bruise."

"Oh, so because I'm a freak when it comes to healing it's okay to attempt to beat the shit out of me. But when I give them a little taste of their own medicine, they go running to 'Daddy' Fury to get me in trouble," she huffed. "Because that's so fair."

"You're not a freak," Coulson almost snapped automatically—he seemed to make it a mission that she didn't feel bad about herself, and what was done to her, especially when she was diagnosed with depression and had pills shoved in her hand. "And Ward didn't go running to Fury."

"He so did," she argued despite knowing that wasn't true—he was an asshole and a Hydra agent, excuse her for being bias against him and maybe on purpose breaking his jaw in two places, she wouldn't have done it if she knew she was going to be shuffled off to school.

(Hell yeah she would, he was going to be an ass to Skye and would choose a Nazi group over the woman he obviously loved or at least cared for. Plus had she mentioned he was an ass? Because he totally was)

"Fury was watching it happen so he didn't really have to go looking for him," he sighed as he unbuckled his seat-belt.

"Come on," she whined as he opened the door. "It's August, summer-time! Not school time."

Coulson had ignoring whines down to an art-form, Hope swore as he didn't even reply to that as he began to unpack her bags from the boot.

* * *

_Normally I don't whine, but I was about to be shuffled into a school with the world's most powerful Telepath—it was weird to think I was now in a world when Telepaths were actually real and not fakes—that would know exactly where I came from and I wasn't sure if it was the old timeline or revised timeline I was in—I had hoped that I would only have to deal with the Avengers, but no, I was booted into the Marvel movie-verse—because I so didn't want to deal with Jean Grey going bat-shit insane and the whole Sentinel future that we glimpsed in Days of the Future Past._

_But then again it could be totally unknown for me as the X-men movies had way to many errors for those who had read the comics—or like me, read some of the comics and browsed the web to get all needed information to keep up-to-date as well as watching the cartoons. _

_Perhaps it was a clash between comics and movie-verses? I don't know and I wouldn't know until I stepped through the threshold—time to stop being a coward._

* * *

Hope knew she was doing what thousands of kids dreamt about doing. She was entering, and becoming a student of, Xavier's—the Charles Xavier! The Professor X—school for mutants.

She remembered when she first saw an episode of X-Men and how she wanted to be a mutant too—funny how things turn out huh?

She couldn't help looking around the large front-hall in awe—ignoring Coulson's almost smug look as she did.

"Agent Coulson?" a smooth female voice called making Hope's shoulders stiffen slightly as she turned so she could watch the woman come closer with soft barely audible footsteps.

Storm—Ororo Monroe—was a beautiful woman with lovely mocha skin, dark eyes and short white hair that surrounded an almost pixie-like face. She was dressed in a comfortable white long-sleeved top and dark fitted jeans—her smile was very bright.

"Miss Monroe?" Coulson asked in return, though it was obvious he knew it was her, and freed one hand to shake hers.

"Storm please," she asked with another smile before turning her gaze onto Hope.

Hope tilted her head stubbornly as she met Storm's dark gaze with her own mismatched gaze—some of the SHIELD agents couldn't stand look into her eyes as they found the two different shades too disturbing—but Storm's gaze did not drift away, she did not flinch away from her odd-coloured gaze, and just held out a hand with a warmer smile of greeting.

Unthinking, Hope reached out with her left hand and finally got a startled reaction from the composed older woman as cool metal encased her warm flesh.

Dark eyes widened in surprise and they glazed down at the gleaming silver hand in mild shock and Hope pulled her hand back, perhaps a bit too quickly to be polite, and stuffed both hands deep in the pockets of her unzipped dark hoody as the straps of one of her bags attempted to slid down her arm.

Dimly she realised that Coulson sighed at her action but she didn't care. She wasn't embarrassed by her metal arm, it was a sign she had survived the hell that was Hydra, and didn't hide it out of shame but because she didn't like people staring at it and, more importantly, her—she had never been that comfortable under other people's attention.

"I'm sorry," Storm's smile had turned into a grimace. "I knew about that," she gestured towards her hidden hand. "It was just a bit shocking to see it in person."

Hope gave her a strained smile.

"I get it," she said almost easily. "I'm used to it."

"You shouldn't be," Storm frowned at her. "You shouldn't have to hide part of yourself away."

"Don't worry," Hope shrugged. "I normally don't. I just thought I wouldn't overwhelm you guys on the first meeting."

"It'll take more than a metal arm to overwhelm us," Storm told her with a wry smile.

Hope just shrugged and watched as Storm's head tilted as though she was listening to something with her eyes slightly unfocused—Professor was obviously talking to her.

"The Professor will see you now," Storm gestured for them to follow her and led them towards Charles Xavier's office.

* * *

_Meeting Charles Xavier went about as well as I thought—according to him, my mind was loud and talkative which I responded with that's where my childhood personality went._

_He kept his calm as he asked about the curious things he saw in my mind and I let him have free rein rummaging through my mind—not the wisest choices as it brought back memories from Hydra that I could have done without._

_It ended with me running towards the garden—Xavier giving me helpfully, and guiltily, directions towards it—as Xavier had to explain to a quietly furious Coulson exactly why I was running away from him after just a few minutes of meeting him._

_Screaming with defiance and anger was strangely relieving, even if it was into the nothingness._

* * *

"She's got a set of lungs," Scott commented from where he was peering down at the new student that was screaming her little head off in the garden.

Logan didn't even look up from where he was completing another beer as Hank read through the paper—Logan didn't know why, there was always a mutant-hating article somewhere that made him grit his teeth in annoyance at the ignorance of people.

"She had an actual metal arm?" Jean's voice was too curious as she asked Storm. "And she could move it fully like a normal arm?"

"It was nothing like Peter's metal though," Storm said softly as she peered down at the coffee mug in her hands. "It holds no warmth of normal flesh and is just cool metal."

"Amazing," Jean's dark eyes gleamed in interest. "I wonder how it works. Hank?"

"I'm not telling you anything I have read in her files, Jean," Hank said absently as he folded the paper. "You are a good doctor that has made both Charles and I proud, but young Hope will not be one of your patients."

"Is there a reason why she's screaming in the garden?" Scott piped up as he placed a casually affectionate hand on Jean's shoulder, one of her slender hands absently drifting up to hold his.

"I'm not sure," Storm worried her bottom lip a little. "She was only meant to be welcomed formally by the Professor."

"No wonder the kid's screaming than," Logan snorted as he pushed himself to his feet. "Chuck's been snooping again."

"Logan," Jean chided lightly but he was already leaving the 'staff' room and heading to greet his new student.

* * *

_When Duerr started giving me Super-Serum, I had to deal with the disconcerting feeling of my senses changing, strengthening, and learning to cope with all the different smells, sights, sounds, tastes and touches I was feeling as they grew stronger. _

_Still my time in Hydra, and being taught by Bucky, had taught me to stay on guard so I like to think I would have at least sense Logan without my enhanced senses—I was kidding myself, huh?_

* * *

"What do you want?" Hope asked as she stared down the well-kept lawn towards the little hint of forest that the Xavier School had.

"Perhaps I'm just concerned," Logan drawled as he walked easily to her side, unlit cigar hanging from his mouth. "About why my new student is having a mental-break-down in the garden."

"I'm not having a mental-break-down," Hope snorted at the thought—it would take more than a few bad memories for her to have a mental-break-down.

"That's good," Logan's hands rested in his low-resting jeans' pocket. "I'm meant to be the one giving you a mental-break-down, not Chuck."

"So you're my teacher?" she glanced at him with amused eyes.

"I heal fast," he glanced at her with dark eyes. "Like I hear you do."

"Yep," she nodded.

"Good," he nodded to himself shortly. "You're going to need it."

_And that was the start of my friendship with The Wolverine, my teacher Logan. _


	5. Chapter 5

Red or green, wasn't that the question? Hope mused as she stared at the apples in the fruit-bowl. Red apples used to be her favourite in her first life, but green apples had been what Hydra had given her and she had gotten used to them.

The slink of one of Logan's claws didn't really surprise her and she didn't flinch as he jabbed the green apple with it, she glanced up to find him staring at her before he took a large bite out of the shiny green apple.

"Did that help with your decision?" He asked around the apple.

"So kind of you to help me," she reached for the red apple. "You're all kindness and sweetness under that tough façade, huh?"

Logan snorted as he watched her pick out some other things for her breakfast like orange-juice and cornflakes—she had a serious problem with sugar, Logan noticed as he realised there was more sugar than actual cereal in the bowl—and a single slice of toast.

"Muffin?" Logan speared a chocolate muffin with another one of his claws and waved in her face.

She smirked as she pulled it off his claw and placed it on her tray.

"Gone lick the chocolate off your claw or not?" she asked as she glanced pointedly at the streaks of chocolate goodness on the tip of his claw.

He just arched a brow as he let it sink back into his hand and smirked at the face she made.

"Do you do that with everything that gets on them?" she asked. "You just sheath them into your body without a care for all the guck on them? Eww."

"You're really going to be squeamish about that?" he asked as they walked towards a table to eat breakfast.

"Do you not care for the things you're letting effect your body?" she asked as she grabbed a spoon. "All the bacteria you're letting in your blood-stream?"

"You're not a germaphobe are you?" he asked as she spooned some milky-sugar with a hint cereal into her mouth.

"With where I've been living for two years?" she snorted after she swallowed her mouthful. "I just don't want my teacher to get sick."

"I don't get sick," he declared firmly before frowning at her. "Do you?"

"Does being poisoned count as being sick?" she asked before she took another mouthful of cereal.

"Nope," he snorted as he bit into the apple again.

"Then I don't," she covered her mouth as she talked—her mother's scowl when she used to talk with her mouthful firmly in her mind.

"Glad you don't have a stupid-ass diet that I would have to fix," he nodded to her tray of food though he grimaced at the sugar. "Though I would lessen the sugar intake by at least half."

"I've spent the last two years with what I eat, when I eat and how much I eat decided for me," she folded her buttered toast in half. "I've learnt a whole new appreciation for food."

"Good," he still was eyeing her sugary cereal. "You still need to cut down on the sugar."

"Nope," she popped the 'p' before she took a bite of her toast.

* * *

_Life at the School was easier than at SHIELD. There was no untrusting gazes that watched me walking through the halls which was a big plus and people could actually met my odd-coloured gaze and didn't stare at the metal that was my left arm._

_I wasn't the only student in the School when I first started; Rogue, Bobby, Kitty and Peter were around and they were welcoming—which was strange considering how SHIELD treated me as an unknown that could later on be an ally though they weren't sure at the moment._

_I got on best with Logan—we were both survivors, both been experiments, and there was a kinship between us—as we were the most alike in a way. (Scott was sure that Logan was corrupting me which made us laugh)_

_I was often paired against Peter in spars—neither of us had to hold back our strength when we fought, neither of us had to worry about accidently breaking bones (though once Peter had hit me hard enough for the metal grafted to my cheekbone was visible for a brief moment before it healed over) and it helped teach us to fight against people with a vastly different heights to us._

* * *

"'ello, Professor," Hope greeted though she didn't turn away from where she was staring at some of the kids playing basketball—term had started a few weeks ago and the School was no longer quiet as it was filled with young mutants.

"Hope," Xavier greeted warmly as he stopped next to her seated form.

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment as they watched the kids use their powers to make the game more interesting before suddenly everything seemed to freeze making Hope glance up at the bald-man next to her.

"Guess this is our private talk, huh?" she asked.

"I am sorry for bringing up bad-memories, Hope," Xavier apologised to her.

"Its fine," she shrugged. "I gave you permission to go snooping about, but I have a feeling that's not what this little chat is about."

"The knowledge you have could help a lot of people if you share it," Xavier finally said his real reason for the chat.

"I could also get people killed," she retorted. "This isn't a movie anymore, or a comic, or a game that I can re-start. This is real-life, their lives that I could make worse by trying to help."

"You could make them better," he said softly.

"I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I know what could make them better," she scoffed. "I could chose something that could end up killing them or destroying the people they will be. It was different when I was writing stories about them, changing them and things to suit my wants, but that was when they were fictional characters and not real people."

"You won't stay away though," he was confident as he spoke.

"And why's that?" she asked.

"Because you are like Logan, you're loyal and will go to great lengths to those that have earned it," he stated simply.

"I don't trust them so why would I be loyal to them?" she asked with a scoff.

"Because you loved the people they will became later in life, you admired them and wrote about them, read other peoples stories about them, you watched their movies over and over again and began reading their comics," he said simply. "And you're loyal already to my other students, you'll fight in the up-coming battle for the world if only to protect them."

"You make me out to be a better person than I am," she said softly.

"Perhaps you're making yourself out to be a worse person than you really are," he told her. "You have been hurt badly since coming to this world, and have changed greatly from the child you was, but you're still a good person underneath it all."

She just snorted in reply.

"You've been made into a woman that I'm not sure can properly die before you have fulfilled your role," he believed every word that came out of his mouth, Hope could tell. "Be your role of protector, shield or simply friend."

"Any more pearls of wisdom?" she asked as the world went back to normal.

"I only have a gift," he held out a silver chain with a long silver tube—about the length of her forefinger—hanging from it and she took it with a confused look. "Open it."

She twisted the lid off the tube and shook it on to her palm till a rolled up piece of paper fell out, she put the necklace beside her as she began to unroll the paper and paused as she saw what was drawn on it.

A round face, almost sharp nose, pale eyes, short hair the curled around the ends framing her face.

"Mum," she breathed as she tenderly stroked the side of her mother's sketched face.

"I got Peter to draw her from your memories," Xavier told her softly.

"Thank you," she carefully rolled the picture up, put it in her tube and placed the necklace around her neck.

"I only bought the necklace," he told her. "You should thank Peter for the drawing."

* * *

_Seeing that picture, I wanted to cry. I didn't want to stop looking at her face, taking in all the wrinkles that gave her face character, and I realised that my memories weren't enough._

_Peter and Xavier had given me the only picture I would probably ever have of my mother, I wouldn't let anything happen to it. It would always be my most precious treasure, my last tie to my old and first life._

* * *

"Where's Hope?" Kitty asked as they stretched under Logan's eyes in the danger room.

"Ah saw her watching the kids playing basketball," Rogue grimaced as she stretched her back.

"She'll be here soon," Bobby twisted his upper-body under Logan's stern gaze.

Speaking of the Devil and she shall appear, Kitty thought as the danger room's doors slid open and Hope walked in dressed in her own black leather suit though there was a glint of silver around her throat which was new.

"Peter!" Immediately she bounded towards Peter and surprised everyone with giving him a tight hug.

Peter grunted in slight pain before his skin turned to steel so she was no longer hurting, almost breaking, his ribs as she seemed to forgotten that he wasn't a durable as she was without his body being steel.

He peered down as she continued to hug him tightly, probably the only one apart from Logan that noticed the slight tremble to her shoulders, and felt the thin tube of the necklace that the Professor had placed his recent drawing in against his chest—the woman must have been important to Hope if it was affecting her this much.

He placed one of his large hands on the back of her head, short curly dark strands attempted to tangle around silver fingers, and wrapped the other around her slim waist to return her hug.

"Break up the love-fest," Logan growled making Hope pull away from Peter with a light flush to her cheeks—the first blush they had ever seen her do. "We've got a training session now."

* * *

_SHIELD wouldn't let me stay at the School, they were happy for them to teach me to control my strength but I would never be able to be an X-man or anything like that._

_SHIELD had found me, they owned me in a way, and in the end I would become a SHIELD agent and not a X-man—which was a shame as I felt at home at Xavier's in a way I hadn't still I woke up in this world._

_Though I still deserved my pokémon in my next life—if I have a next one—but I must admit that I wouldn't mind being a mutant and actually becoming a proper X-man instead._

* * *

Rogue huffed as she let herself fall back on her ass on the floor and grimaced at the feel of her leather suit sticking to her sweaty skin and smiled as Bobby's cool arms wrapped around her waist—it really was great having a human ice-cube as a boyfriend.

Kitty groaned as she flopped beside them, making sure to press against Bobby's side to get the benefits of his cool skin—Kitty had never seen Bobby break a sweat before—while Peter sat next to Hope as they both caught the breaths back a lot quicker than the rest of them.

"She was important to you then?" Peter asked Hope as she fiddled with her new necklace. "The woman I drew?"

"Professor didn't tell you who she was?" Hope was surprised as Peter shook his head. "She was my Mum."

Rogue's attention couldn't help being caught with how Hope said 'she was my mum' as the slightly standoffish girl used the softest and fondest tone that Rogue had ever heard from her.

"You've drawing is the only picture I have of her," Hope tilted her head back to flash a soft smile—so different from her distance with an edge of left-over anger (which no-one could really blame her for as she had been used as an experiment) smile—at Peter. "Thank you."

Rogue had to swallow thickly as she entwined her gloved hands with Bobby's bare hands. Before she had run away, back when she only just discarded the name Marie, she had made sure to pack pictures of her parents and couldn't imagine not having them with her. For Hope having no picture till the Professor got Peter to draw one was almost unthinkable—no wonder she seemed softer, happier, today.

"I'll draw more if you like," Peter told her as he rested one large hand on Hope's petite shoulder and she flashed him a smile.

"Thank you."

* * *

_I had thought I wouldn't have to deal with Hydra invading Xavier's, or anyone else really, as it was 2007 when I joined the school but I had learnt swiftly that the movies only showed part of the picture, especially when there was none for 2008, and I really shouldn't have been surprised by Siren's scream on the night the Professor and Jean had to leave._

* * *

Hope didn't think as she bounded out of her room and snarled as she tackled a uniformed man that was attempting to take one of the kids, Artie, and she doesn't flinch as he fired bullets into her before she crushed his throat with a well-place squeeze of her left hand before looking up at the young mutant.

"Hide," she ordered the scared boy who nodded and did as he was told.

Logan's roar echoed through the mansion followed shortly by Beast's.

"Hope," Peter turned the corner with some of the other students trailing behind him in his steel form.

"Hide with Artie," Hope told them as she gestured to her room where Artie had disappeared to and they hurried to it. "Let's go."

* * *

_Peter and I double-teamed anyone we came across that dared attack our home. They had underestimated us and now their corpses were being taken away from by the police as Logan and I healed from our gun-shots—we were the only ones that didn't bother dodging the bullets despite the fact they could hurt us, unlike Peter with his bullet-proof steel-skin, and had to recover from it as the Professor and Jean came home—they didn't come home alone though._

* * *

Hope's lips pursed and her face tighten as she watched Coulson follow Jean and Xavier and knew her time at the school was up.

"Coulson," she greeted in a way that tipped Logan off as he stood almost protectively next to her with Peter moving to flank her other side.

"Hope," Coulson eyed the two man either side of her and almost seemed sad that he was breaking them apart—almost being the key word because Coulson was going to follow orders either way. "New orders for you."

"You're attempting to take my student?" there was a dangerous undertone to Logan's growl as Peter's face tightened as silver spread across his flesh as it turned steel.

"She's part of our division as she has been ordered to come back as her training has been completed," Coulson informed Logan with mild ease. "She has no other reason to stay here."

Logan opened his mouth, no doubt to tell Coulson and his division to go fuck themselves, when Xavier cut him off.

"We cannot stop them Logan," Xavier told him simply and Logan glared at him once before turning his glare back on Coulson.

"I should pack than?" she asked almost idly though part of her heart was breaking—she had finally found somewhere that felt like home and SHIELD was taking it away from her.

Coulson just nodded and she stood swiftly and left before anyone could see the tears that were threating to fall—her life sucked and just wasn't fair at all damn it.

* * *

_SHIELD owned me in a way, and I always knew I wouldn't be able to stay at Xavier's forever so I shouldn't be so upset._

_But I was. I had made friends, became part of the large rather fucked-up family that was Xavier's, and now I had to leave it because I had completed my training._

_Fury would be in deep shit if I ever found out that he was behind the attack on the school just to see if I was ready. _

* * *

**AN: A few questions for readers;**

**1. Should this stay a gen-fic or should Hope be paired with someone? If you would like a pairing, please say who.**

**2. Should I do another fic about Hope being reborn again but as a mutant this time and a mostly strictly X-men verse? If so should she born in it to one of the Canon characters? If so, please say who. Or should she wake up fully grown like this one just were fuzzier memories so she doesn't tip of Xavier to her first two lives? Also should it be gen or pairing fic?**

**3. If I do end up writing the other fic, what mutant power do you think she should have?**

**4. What should her third life's name be?**


	6. Chapter 6

_In Hydra you understood that you may never see the ones you call friends again—it was the life of an experiment to never know when your next experiment would be your last._

_In SHIELD, I was only friendly with Coulson, Clint and Natasha so I wasn't all that upset for being shuffled off to Xavier's._

_But at Xavier's, I had friends and felt at home, like I was part of a family again and now I was being forced to say goodbye._

* * *

Trying to pack with several kids attempting to hid her stuff and unpack her bags was annoying, but strangely endearing as it showed they didn't want her to go. In the end Logan had to glower at them so she could finish packing though Hope bet that Logan wished to do the same as them.

Despite the fact that she could easily carry all three of her bags—a feat that she would never have been able to do if her first life as she had problems carrying one stuffed duffle bag—Logan acted like a gentlemen and took them from her.

"You're trying to get rid of me quickly?" she attempted to joke which fell flat as Logan gave her a look that could have stopped a raging rhino. "Yeah, bad joke."

"The others are ready to make a distraction long enough for you to get away," Logan told her in an undertone as they began to walk towards the front hall. "One of Slim's cars is waiting for you in the back-road."

"Scott's helping?" she asked in surprise as her heart warmed.

"You're one of us," Logan said simply as they reached the stairs and she glanced downwards.

One of Rogue's hands were bare and she was standing close to Coulson with Bobby next to her, Peter was looming at the bottom of the steps with Kitty standing at the mid-way point—obviously ready to help Hope phase through anything in her escape—and Hank leaned against the other side of the bottom step.

Xavier kept the lower-half of his face covered by his hands as his blue eyes stared at Coulson with Storm and Scott flanking him. Jean's hand was entwined with Scott's and she was actively glaring at Coulson.

These people were her friends, her family, and they were ready to fight against SHIELD to help her run away. She had to swallow thickly before she turned to Logan.

"No I'm not," she said before pressing a kiss to his rough cheek and taking her bags from him.

She determinedly didn't let any tears fall as she began to descend down the stairs, leaving Logan staring at her back with clenched fists.

Kitty reached out, her face scrunched up to stop tears, and wrapped her slender arms around her neck with a muffled sob.

"We'll help you," she whispered and Hope closed her eyes in pain as she rested her head against Kitty's, different lengths of dark strands tangling together. "Let us,"

"I can't," Hope told her, her voice breaking.

Kitty pulled back as Hank reached them and took her bags with a sad smile, briefly pausing to mess up Hope's short locks, and Hope surged forward to give Kitty a proper hug, rocking slightly as she felt hot tears damp her vest, before pulling away and continuing her descend.

Peter swept her up in a large hug, lifting her feet off the ground, and she wrapped her arms around his neck—it wasn't a long hug like the one she had with Kitty, but it was held the same meaning and emotion.

Hope looked at Rogue and held out her arms. They hugged for a long while, long enough that Bobby decided to join in and wrap his cool arms around them both.

* * *

_Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting. J.M Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, said that._

_But even though I was saying goodbye, I knew I wouldn't forget these people that had won a place in my heart despite me going away—I couldn't forget them, I wouldn't forget them. They were family, and you never forget family._

* * *

Hope gazed out of the darkened window as Coulson drove, mismatched eyes reflecting back.

"I am sorry," he told her after a while. "But the Director would never let you stay there."

"Because SHIELD owns me?" she asked.

"Because SHIELD can't let an unknown girl—who was experimented on to became a new breed of Super-Soldier—out into the world to do what she wants," Coulson corrected her. "We're doing this not just for the safety of everyone else, but of you too. We don't want whoever did this to you to get a hold of you, and if you stayed at Xavier's they could come after you and hurt those kids, you know that right?"

"I do," she glanced over at him. "Why do you think I've come with you? It's not because Fury said come back, it's for them."

"I'm sorry," he repeated though this time he actually sounded like he meant it.

"I know," she said simply. "I am too."

The car-ride was spent in silence after that as Coulson drove Hope to the New York SHIELD barracks where she would be living from now on.

* * *

_My room in Xavier's was just that, it was my room and people could tell when they walked in because of the pictures framed on the set of drawers and night-stand, the sticker covered ice-blue DS balanced on a stack of pokémon games, the pair of discarded jeans thrown over my desk chair, rumbled sheets on the bed that I never truly made, the sticker covered laptop half-hidden under the covers, and the towers of DVDs and books. _

_My room in SHIELD was different though. Tiled floor, metal-framed bed, single set of drawers and wardrobe with adjoining bathroom—it reminded me of a classier, cleaner, version of my cell in Hydra. _

_It wasn't really a room so I didn't attempt to make it one. I tucked my frame photos and drawn pictures from Xavier's into my underwear draw—I didn't want SHIELD to easily see those pictures. _

_I stacked my games, books and DVDs on the top of the drawers and stuffed my clothes in the wardrobe and the drawers. My laptop and DS rested beside my bed—plugged into the kindly placed sockets which was probably going add a bit to the electric bill._

* * *

She wasn't a mutant, just an experimental new super-soldier, but Xavier's had taken her in, craved a place into her heart and she honestly cared for the mutants and wanted to help them. Her being around had pushed the timeline off key, soon she knew Jean's 'death', the Cure, Scott's death, Xavier's death and Dark Phoenix would happen—Magneto and Mystique had been strangely quiet during her time at the School—though she was glad that it didn't happen when she was there and she wasn't forced to watch it happen—to quote Hermione Granger 'Bad things happen to those that mess with time,'

Part of her wanted to go and get Jimmy—Leech—who was still being experimented on as a cure was created. She hated the thought of leaving any kid to face experiments, but she had too if she didn't want to screw up the timeline more than she already had.

But she could do something about Camp X-ray—how the Americans couldn't see they were acting like Nazis when it came to mutants, she would never understand—and officially she wasn't yet a SHIELD agent so Fury couldn't say she was putting SHIELD in danger because of her stunt.

She was going to free Bishop and whoever else she found.

* * *

_Finding Bishop was rather easy—I just had to get past the guards and such which was kind of easy as I wasn't a mutant so none of the sensors had gone off—but finding Blink with Warpath protecting her had been something that made me pause as I stared at them._

_They were kids and they were here because they were 'dangerous' when really it was because they were different and that scared most humans._

_Perhaps I would have once been one of those scared humans, a person that thought it was cool to have powers as long as it was in movies and not real-life, but I had been thrown into hell, had done things I never thought I would ever have to do—I had killed people, something that made thinking about Mum hard as I was now a murderer, I have learnt to fight something that could have helped me with I was young and being bullied—and I had lived through horrible experiments that had made me wish I was dead and Death was what I always thought it would be—the end of everything._

_The only reason Blink and Warpath was there was because Blink didn't know how to control her powers as of yet as they had only started coming in though she was already locked up because of the X-gene that she carried and the guards kept them as downtrodden as possible so they didn't attempt to escape—Hydra had used a mixture of being kind and being cruel to their prisoners so they didn't attempt to escape._

_The only reason I got their trust was by defending them from a guard and showing off my metal hand. _

_I carried Blink with Warpath holding my metal hand as Bishop led a small uprising against the guards and they escaped in the chaos. _

"_Take them and go to Charles Xavier," I had told him as I passed Blink—her real name was Clarice—into his arms and pressed Warpath's—his name was James—hand into Bishops'. _

_Bishop nodded and fled with the two children while I went to get picked up by Clint—Fury still wasn't impressed with what I had done._

* * *

"Why do you always bring me up here?" Hope attempted to growl at Clint but was too busy making sure she wouldn't fall from the rafters to really put her heart in it.

"I'm helping you get over your stupid fear of heights," Clint lounged casually on one the rafters and let one leg dangle.

"It's not stupid!" Hope snapped quietly. "A lot of people are afraid of heights, people die falling from heights or get brain-damaged or break their bones."

"All of which you can't do," he retorted.

"We don't know that," she hissed at him. "I've never tried to leap to my death before."

"Want to try now?" Clint teasingly reached for her and she slapped his hands away with a scowl.

"Fuck you!" she snapped. "Damn Bird-brain."

"If you're attempting to be stealthy," Fury called up from the ground. "Then you two dumbasses need more training."

"It's her fault," Clint immediately blamed with a smirk.

"Hope!" Fury called. "You've got a mission so get your tiny ass down here!"

"What mission?" she called back as she grimaced at the height she would have to climb down.

"Helping Coulson get a meeting with Stark," Fury scowled. "The little bastard keeps brushing us off."

Hope blinked, Stark? Was in the events of Ironman already? Shit, she really should keep a closer eye on the calendar that Natasha gave her or she would continue to be blind-sided like she was now.

* * *

_My luck sucked and Fate had decided to make me her bitch—that's my only reason for the fuckery that was my life now as I was followed Pepper Potts with a small group of agents with Coulson leading the charge to face the Iron Monger with the cheerful thought that I would be the one doing the most fighting until Stark showed up._

* * *

"Lady, screaming is so over-rated," Hope grunted as she had to pull her flesh back in place so the rather large wound to her chest would heal. "It doesn't help anyone, just annoys the people that are attempting to help you."

"He nearly fired a hole through your chest," Pepper had long lost her calm as she stared at Hope with wide eyes while Tony Stark was off fighting his pseudo-uncle—Hope honestly couldn't understand why people actually wanted to save people when all they seemed to do was scream in fear and/or run.

"Well I'm still alive and you don't see me screaming from this, do you?" Hope asked as she grimaced down at her chest as it finished healing—she would be flashing people her small breasts as her healing didn't extend to her clothing, it was lucky that she had no real shame when it came to her body as that something Hydra quickly got rid of and something she didn't really have in her first life. "This is just perfect."

She glanced up at the older woman that was still scared and panicked.

"Oi, can we go inside and attempt to find something to help your boss?" she asked because she didn't appreciate the cool wind brushing against her bare chest.

* * *

_Coulson handed me his blazer so I was covered as we went up to see if Stark had survived. He had, barely though, but I wasn't surprised by his stunt._

_Tony Stark always had a suicidal disregard when it came to his life—anyone who had watched the movies would agree with me. _

_I found I liked Stark as much in real-life as I did when I just watched the movies and reading the comics. _

_Pepper was still too overwhelmed to banter with the man as his new/old reactor was shoved into his chest and he was completely fascinated by my metal-arm—babbling on about how he would make another arm for me as my arm was completely out-of-date and he could totally make it better._

_I challenged him to make me an arm that I could unleash a knife/sword like Edward Elric, he smirked from a pale face as he accepted the challenge._

* * *

"You didn't really think he would keep to the script?" Hope snorted as she glanced at Fury as he gritted his teeth in annoyance. "You should fire the person that wrote that shit, it was flimsy at best and people aren't completely stupid. They would realise that Tony Stark and Ironman was one and the same sooner or later, probably."

"Your faith in your fellow humans is astounding," Fury drawled out as he glanced down to where she was casually lounging on Stark's couch like she owned it—despite the fact it probably cost as much as her laptop and DS cost added together.

"You couldn't have believed he would stick to the script since we are here," she pointed out. "I think you've been a little harsh on Jarvis."

"It's an A.I," he shot back.

"He was created by Tony Stark which meant he probably has emotions of his own and you've just raped him to get inside his home," she frowned up at him as he glared down at her.

"_It's_," he stressed. "Is not human."

"He's still probably Stark's baby and he'll get you for this," she glared at him when he snorted. "Am I the only one that sees that he could destroy you without his new suit? He's a _billionaire_ that can probably hack the pentagon and has the ear of the whole American press as soon as he leaves his home, he could out you to the world, destroy your credit rating and give you a criminal record a mile long—though it wouldn't be far from the truth really."

Fury crossed his arms across his broad chest and glowered down at her.

* * *

_Fury and I had a complex relationship with little-to-no-trust between us. Without Fury, without SHIELD, I would be no-one with not even a penny to my name and would probably still be under Duerr's hands and owned almost everything I claimed as my own—they basically owned me too._

_They did shady dealings I didn't care for and would have done without being part of, catered too much to the bastards that were the World Council, had the cancer of Hydra deep in its heart and brain and didn't do enough to help my family—the mutants of the Xavier's. _

_Fury was a spy so I distrusted him for that alone._

_He didn't trust me because I had spent two years with Hydra—despite the fact he knew I hated them and would help him destroy them when he decided the time had come—and I was one of the few things that could kill him as I wouldn't stop even he placed a bullet into my head—or as far as the metal that was my skull would let it. I was too compromised by my relationships with various mutants, had no real loyalty for SHIELD and was too unpredictable for him to really feel comfortable around._

_But we would work together because of our mutually hatred of Hydra, our determination for their destruction, our respect for being survivors and my respect for his determination to actually protect people and his respect for how far I would go to protect myself and those I cared about. _

_He respected how self-serving I could be—Katherine Pierce from Vampire Dairies had a good motto 'better you than me'—and I could respect that despite all the shit he had seen and been through, he still wanted to protect people and world. _

_I could appreciate his secrets and he could appreciate my own—though he would always be miffed by the fact that he couldn't find out my secrets. _


	7. Chapter 7

Tony paused as he saw his uninvited guests, Hope silently waved to him before doing some strange mime that Tony took to take she had no part in what happened to Jarvis—she had been fascinated by Jarvis and delighted in hearing another British accent—before he focused his gaze on the tall dark man in front of his windows—perhaps he shouldn't have laughed when that fortune-teller that Pepper hired for some fun said there was a tall and dark stranger in his future.

"'I am Ironman'," The man mocked as he turned to face him. "Really?"

"I told you he would ignore the script," Hope muttered loud enough for them to hear making Tony smirk though the other man ignored her.

"Do you think you're the only superhero in this world?" he asked.

"Who are you?" Tony cut in.

"I'm Nick Fury," he introduced himself. "I run SHIELD."

"Ah, the head asshole," Tony commented making Hope smirk. "What can I help you with?"

"It's what I can help you with," Fury countered.

* * *

_And that was the official start of the Avengers though Fury would never admit it. Stark, Natasha, Clint and I were the first to be considered as Avengers with Bruce Banner hopefully joining the ranks later because Steve Rogers was still considered dead and Thor had yet to crash-land on earth and level a small town in New Mexico._

_I was always around when Stark had to do training, sometimes even sparring with the man as well, and I often was over his place as he kept upgrading my arm and we chatted about idle things as he either designed a new suit or a new arm for me. _

_Slowly Stark became Tony as he became a friend. Survivors are always drawn together, huh?_

_I noticed his decline in health, but we didn't talk about it. I knew he was sick, seriously sick, and he knew I was aware that there was something wrong with him. I acted like I always did—I knew first-hand how irritating pity and sympathy was to the ill—and I like to think he was grateful for that though I did attempt to offer my blood to help him with its healing effects if he could get rid of the almost toxic nature of it—which he was able to do and regular shots of my treated-blood were coupled with changing his reactor core as his blood poisoning became worse and he got ever closer to death._

_Despite knowing how it would all turn out, I didn't like seeing the slow decline to him as he had become my friend. It was like watching Dad again, as the cancer eat at him and he became paler and thinner with too cold hands with surprising strength—I would always remember the last time he ever held my hand, fingers like ice though strong like iron, as he drifted in and out of pained unconsciousness and I remember that I promised I would see him again, I never did as he died a week later. _

_I didn't want to see Tony die though I logically knew he wouldn't if things went as they should. But I knew my presence had screwed with the X-men Timeline, how did I know I wasn't screwing up the Avengers' timeline too?_

* * *

"Why do you guys always wear black?" Hope slid on her dark aviator shades before shedding her jacket, the heat getting to her slowly.

"You really going to ask that question?" Clint shot a look Hope's darkly coloured outfit—the lightest colour he had ever seen the younger woman wear was white.

"It matches my soul," she smirked at him as they idly watched other agents' block of the strange hammer and set-up something structure around it.

Clint just snorted in reply.

"Sure it does,"

"It does," she insisted with a grin. "Anyway has Coulson figured out what's up with the big-ass hammer?"

"Nope," Clint replied as he leaned back against the car—they were the muscle and was just there to keep the locals away really so didn't really have to go down there with everyone else.

Something that suited them as neither wouldn't do anything under the sun as it slowly attempted to bake them—according to Hope at least.

* * *

_Many of the agents were uneasy with my presence with them—if I actually gave a fuck about them, and instead of just Natasha, Clint and Phil out of the whole of SHIELD, I may have felt hurt about how they still didn't trust me, than again they still didn't trust Natasha—so I was able to slip out and explore the little town to my hearts-content and I was able to see the sight of Jane Foster hitting the Mighty Thor with her car again._

_It was brilliant._

* * *

"Oh my god," Hope gasped out through laughter. "You actually hit him twice?"

"Instead of laughing at us, can you help us put him the car?" Darcy glared at her as she huffed with Hope still grinning as she helped Erik pick up the God-turn-Mortal into the car.

"Can I totally come with you guys?" she pinned them bright eyes. "I want front row seats for this show."

"No," Erik Selvig was a total kill-joy.

"If you don't let me come, I'll call the police to say you've run-over an escaped patient from the hospital, who is thought to have mental-problems, before kidnapping said man," Hope countered with a smile making Erik glare.

"I like her," Darcy whispered to Jane who frowned at her intern before turning to Hope.

"Get in," she decided firmly to Erik's ire.

With a total smug grin, Hope hopped in the back after pushing Thor over and began to talk to Darcy about everything that had happened so far as Erik, almost moodily, got into the passengers-seat and Jane into the driver's seat before they pulled away from the hospital.

Hope was not missing a moment of this show.

* * *

_Really I should have thought it through. I was going with the little group with an alien/god confined to a mortal shell and I really should have known if anyone figured out that I wasn't an innocent bystander interested in the latest gossip and such, it would the great warrior Thor._

* * *

"I'm impressed," Thor stared at her with blue eyes making Hope glance up from her DS and the three scientists watch them. "To meet such a strong female warrior."

Hope could almost hear Erik's teeth grinding together as another reason for distrusting her was laid out for all to see, but she simply raised her eyebrows at the broad man.

"What makes you think I'm a warrior?" she was honestly curious as she was just sat on one of their chairs while playing her DS while the others had a hissed argument.

"You are built like a warrior"—"are you calling me broad and bulky?" she asked and was ignored—"and have a tensed ease around you that marks you as a warrior. Plus I can feel the kinship between us fellow warriors."

She snorted as she absently saved her game and flipped the screen closed.

"I'm no warrior," she glanced up when it seemed like he was about to interrupt and glared at him which made him look almost amused. "Warriors fight with honour and other such crap and always fight for a cause or people. I'm a survivor and I fight for no one but myself."

"You are a warrior," he insisted stubbornly. "And you have honour."

"And you are a total moron when it comes to humans," she countered and almost cursed out loud as his blue eyes sharpened.

Gods, why did people often write him as an idiot in fan fiction? He had to be a couple of centuries old at the very least and was a fucking warrior, and prince, of Asgard which was still very much stuck in the Viking mind-set—that didn't mean he was stupid though.

He may have been mostly ignorant of how things worked on Earth, completely vexed that he wasn't being given the respect he was used too, completely annoyed that he's words were being disregarded by the people who found him and took him to a place where he was assaulted in his mind, but he was still a cunning warrior—he had nothing on his brother though as he was too honest and forthright—and had caught on that she knew he wasn't from here, he knew she was aware of who he was and what he was and he was curious in how she knew that.

Part of her expected him to call her out on her secret knowledge but he didn't, he demanded food instead.

* * *

_I purposely took the seat next to Thor and stopped him from smashing his mug on the floor, glowering at him when he looked at me and told him firmly to use his words and not his actions. _

_Darcy thought it was amusing that I was basically baby-sitting the 'crazy guy' while Jane was more focused on grilling Thor on everything that had happened and the sudden aurora in the sky and where he came from—he was too busy eating to really answer—and only Erik was still giving me the suspicious looks as he quickly realised that I knew Thor, or at least of him and how he would react, and that made him trust me less. _

_When we found SHIELD looting Jane's stuff made Jane flip while Erik attempted to stop her doing something stupid as he recognised SHIELD. Thor watched with a frown and apart from the few glances being sent towards me, the agents made no mention that I was one of them._

* * *

"You're like me aren't you?" Thor asked after Jane had drifted off to sleep. "You're not from this world."

It wasn't a question, it was a statement that he knew was true.

"No, I'm not," she admitted softly as she wrapped herself up with a soft blanket because it was cold without the sun. "I didn't think it was that obvious though."

"I told you," he smiled at her. "We share a kinship."

She snorted at that.

"You at least will be able to go home," she pointed out. "I'll never be able to leave this world and I will die here."

"I am not allowed to leave," he frowned as he admitted that. "My mother has refused to remove the banishment as she grieves for my father."

"That's bull," she rested her head against the back of the fold up chair as Thor looked at her in surprise. "No mother would keep their child banished, especially if their husband had died. They would want their family around them so they could grieve together. You'll go home, I know you will."

"You are very wise than," he smiled at her making her chuckle as she closed her eyes.

"I'm just using common-sense," she told him.

"What was your mother like?" Thor asked after a moment of silence.

"Strong," she said. "Though she never understood why we called her strong. She was fiery and had a temper on her, but she was caring and patient. Stubborn as anything out there and smart too. She laughed and smiled a lot and always laughed when I did something stupid or childish—I mostly did those things so she would laugh."

"You miss her."

"Yes."

"Do you think about her a lot?"

"Not as much as I used too. I've become a killer since I've come here and I know I have disappointed her."

"No mother would be disappointed that her child had learnt to survive, she would just be sad of the length her child had to go to so she could survive the harshness of the world."

"What's your Mum like?"

They spent most of the night talking about their mothers and their childhoods before they finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

_Thor_ _could very well adapt to life on Earth as long as he was with Jane—it was so painfully obvious how besotted they already were—and despite being confined to a 'mortal' form he would be a great man. _

_Unfortunately he had duties and his friends had come, the Destroyer close on their heels._

* * *

"Give me a sword or a knife," Hope demanded as she joined the Warriors Three and Sif in the line of defence.

"What do you think you can do, little mortal?" Fandral asked though he easily handed over one of his blades under Hogun's and Sif's disapproving gazes.

Hope smirked as she tested the blade and got used to its feel.

"I'm not exactly mortal anymore," she told him as she slid into a ready stance.

"Where did you found this woman Thor?" Fandral called back to his friend with a flirty grin directed to Hope. "If I had known about you—"

"Believe me, you don't want to finish that sentence," she flashed Fandral a smile with too much teeth being barred to be consider friendly making Sif nod at her in approval and Hogun almost smiled while Volstagg laughed.

"And actually, I was the one that found Thor," Hope told him as the Destroyer came to a stop across from them.

* * *

"Fuck," she breathed out as charred flesh mended and healed a lot slower than normal and she could hear Darcy scream in horror as she pushed herself up on her feet—she was so glad that she had stashed her bag, which held her DS, somewhere safe so it hadn't been melted or broke during the fight—and snarled at the alien robot—she could almost feel Loki's surprise through his connection to the Destroyer.

The lower part of her jaw had been burnt badly—it had only been hit by part of its ray as the rest had been focused on her torso—and she could tell some of her metal jaw was visible as skin mend and she was so happy that she had decided to wear a chain-metal top under her clothes so she wouldn't be exposing herself to the world like she had to when she fought at SI with the Iron Monger.

"Now I'm pissed off," she stated in a would-be calm voice and pushed herself from the balls of her feet towards the metal beast.

She was a Super-Soldier, she was damn near Immortal, she had been Wolverine's prize-student—one of his fuckin' kids—and she wasn't going to be beaten by a robot controlled by Loki.

She let out a yell of defiance—how often had she laughed at those that yelled during their fights for seemingly no reason when she had watched movies?—and she attempted to tackle it, blade red hold in her hand as she stabbed and sliced at it.

She was thrown back with force and landed on her back hard enough to make it snap.

"Oh shit," she spoke as the Destroyer loomed over her and fired from were its face should be.

"HOPE!" Thor roared as he watched the fire consume his friend and melt the flesh from her metal bones. "LOKI! STOP!"

The onslaught was finished and Thor almost recoiled from the sight of Hope though he managed not to as he heard both Darcy and Jane retch.

Her eyes had melted, its gooeyness seeped down her metal cheek that had some flesh stubbornly clinging to it, and her hair was nothing but ash in the air. Her chain-mail vest had almost completely melted and become one with her rip cage. She should be dead, anyone else would have already been dead, yet he could see her fingers twitching—blackened fingers slowly returning to their normal pale hue—and knew she still lived and breathed.

She should be on her way to Hela's realm or Valhalla and yet she was here, alive, and Thor knew that she would continue to fight despite the fact that she couldn't win and he knew he had to act, give her time to recover and not make her hasten to her feet to lend him aid.

"Please!" he begged his brother as he began to walk forward with his arms spread wide.

* * *

_Fighting a robot with a fiery energy-beam for a weapon with just a single blade? Yeah, epically bad idea as he had actually melted my eyes—I was fuckin' blind—and melted the flesh of quite a lot of my body—being burned was the worse pain in the world and if my vocal-cords were functioning that I would show how much it hurt by screaming till I was coughing up blood from a torn throat._

* * *

Coulson had to use all his training not to retch as he stood over Hope—she was healing, slowly but surely, but seeing her without eyes or a real face was horrifying—and wasn't surprised that some of the younger agents actually did retch and let their bile splatter the ground.

Clint didn't even flinch as he crouched down next to his friend and whistled as he took all the damaged that she had survived through. Clint and Natasha had both seen some of the most gruesome sights and almost nothing made them flinch anymore.

"Fuck, what the hell was you thinking?" Clint summed up exactly what Coulson was thinking in a very blunt way.

Hope flipped him the bird as slowly her vest came unstuck from her rib-cage, her teeth gritted against each other as a way to vocalise her pain.

"Tasha is so going to give you hell for this," he informed her as he slowly reached out to pick her up.

"Hope," Phil kept his voice bland with a touch of sternness to it. "You are so writing up this fuckery for Fury to read."

She flashed him a thumbs down to sum up her feelings on that order before making grabby hands which made Coulson sigh.

He had to go track down her bag with her DS or she would be impossible to deal with even if they replaced it as she would have to start all over again and whine about that to hell.

"You'll get it when you can see again," he told her before ordering one of the agents to find her bag.

If she actually still had a proper face, Phil was certain that she would be pouting.


	8. Chapter 8

_It took a day for my face and eyes to grow back, a day that I spent doped up to the gills with pain-killers as Natasha informed that I was stupid for taking on an alien robot alone—I wasn't alone per say, the warrior three were there though they weren't as much help as I thought they would be._

* * *

The alarm blared through the building to inform everyone that a prisoner had escaped.

Hope lazily watched as the other agents in the gym scrambled to get dressed and lend aid, she didn't bother as she knew that the only 'prisoner' that SHIELD had at the moment was the Good Captain and they would be able to track him down.

They had placed a tracker in him—something she didn't have as her blood actually dissolved the little tracker as it was that toxic—so they didn't really have to panic as much as they were.

She clipped on her headphones, listening to her playlist of rock/punk/punk-pop and such, and made her way to one of the treadmills with a roll of her shoulders—she wasn't going to run after the escaped Captain.

She had training scheduled at the moment so she was busy working-out and warming up for the unlucky sod that would be facing her in a spar later as she was feeling the slightest bit annoyed about the newest Anti-Mutant act that was going through the government.

* * *

A phantom pain on the back of his shoulder made him roll them despite the fact that it had already healed from where he had dug the little tracker out.

Steve didn't know what to make of Fury or SHIELD. He was grateful for them finding him and all, but the tracker didn't endear him to them much.

He glanced through the large glass windows that allowed one to see the various agents sparing as he followed after Fury.

A glint of silver caught his attention—they allowed weapons during friendly spars?—and his head snapped to the side and his eyes widened at the sight that met his gaze.

There was a petite woman fighting a man almost twice her size and she was winning. The silver was actually one of her arms and he winced in sympathy as he caught sight of the mess of scars that circled her left shoulder where the silver arm met it—only visible because of the thin-straps of her vest.

She was pale little thing with short hair pulled back into a rough ponytail. She was fast, darting in and out with quick punches that made her sparring partner stumble back with grunts of pain.

She kept on the balls of her feet and was constantly on the move as she pushed her partner to be on the defence as she kept up an almost brutal series of punches.

He winced as one of her punches caught the man's nose and he reeled back as blood poured from the obviously broken nose. He glanced at Fury to see his lips pressed tightly together as he near-glowered at the woman before he tapped sharply on the glass.

The man glanced up at Fury though the woman ignored him as she delivered a brutal high kick that brought the man to the ground with a painful thump.

"Hope!" Fury barked as he almost pounded on the glass again and finally the woman looked up and pinned both Fury and Steve with mismatched eyes and an annoyed look. "Here, now."

Steve could hear Fury's teeth grinding together as the woman rolled her eyes before spinning on her heel. She barely paused to throw her dark towel over her right shoulder and grabbed a large and half empty water bottle before she left the room as some other agents moved to help their fallen comrade.

A whisper of bare feet on carpet floor made Steve look up and he felt his ears burn as he realised how little the woman was actually wearing—a black pair of shorts raised low on her hips, showing the sharp edge of her hip bones and a hint of a scar that cut into the right side of her stomach, and a thin dark grey vest that clung with to her body because of her light sheen of sweat.

He got he was in the future, but still couldn't understand why women now wore so little clothes. Was there no modesty in the world anymore?

The woman, Hope, glanced at him once with her duo-coloured eyes before turning her gaze onto Fury as she took the lid of her bottle and took a long drink—obviously unconcerned with whatever Fury was about to say.

"What did I say about breaking bones in friendly spars?" Fury growled as soon as she swallowed her water and let dangle from her silver fingers as she wiped her mouth with the back of her right hand in a very unladylike fashion.

"Not to," she answered in annoyed way with a single shrug of her shoulders making Fury glare down at her with his single dark eye—Steve was surprised at the British accent that she spoke with.

Fury than began to almost rant at her as he told her off with Hope absently nodding along though Steve doubted she was really listening.

Steve ignored her lack of dress as he took her in more with the eyes of an artist and a soldier. Hope had the taunt muscles of a soldier under her pale skin—it hardly looked like it had seen any sun—and her features probably made her seem younger than she really was—Steve couldn't guess her age, she looked younger than him, acting younger, but Steve was almost sure that she was older than his twenty-five years.

She was about as tall as he used to be pre-serum days though it was obvious by the mostly one-sided spar he saw that it didn't hinder her in a fight—she was obviously used to fighting those taller than her.

Something about her was odd, the punch that had broken the other agent's nose had seemed like a glancing blow of her right fist that shouldn't have done as much damage as it had done. It almost reminded him when he was sparing with the Commandos and forgot about his strength for a moment and ended up breaking Dum-Dum's or Bucky's nose by accident.

But that couldn't be possible, Erskine's serum had been lost with his death. She couldn't be like him, could she?

"That it," Fury suddenly snapped almost making both Steve and Hope jump as they looked at him—Steve with straight-back soldier posture that looked painfully rigid to Hope's eyes and Hope straight and yet slightly slumped posture that only modern teenagers could pull off. "You're new partner is Captain Rogers, at least he'll be able to heal whatever damage you level him and might actually beat the snot out of you."

Fury sounded pleased of the idea of Steve beating the snot out of the short woman which made the good soldier glance at the dark-skinned man with slightly wide-eyes.

Hope just scoffed.

"I heal at a much faster rate than him," she pointed out with simple certainty that made it clear that Hope was like Steve—perhaps better in certain abilities. "From the old reports, he hardly used his strength and thus hasn't expanded the level of strength since he was first injected while I push myself to raise my standard level of strength." She paused for a brief moment and shot Steve a look. "Plus he looks too much of a gentlemen to beat the snot out of me, or attempt to."

"I've had enough of you breaking the bones of my agents because something has annoyed you," Fury growled. "You'll be partners with Captain Rogers, you'll get him up-to-date with the world and such. And you will not complain."

"Fat fuckin' chance," she scoffed as Steve stared at her with slightly too wide of eyes as he had never heard a woman swear so bluntly, especially in front of her boss, and he dimly wondered if he really wanted to get to know the future.

* * *

_Fury had never paired me up with anyone before, I was normally added to Natasha's, Clint's or Coulson's missions as he knew they were the only SHIELD agents that I liked and mildly trusted. _

_So I was immediately suspicious that he had paired me with Steve Rogers as I totally didn't believe the real reason was that Fury wanted to see someone beat the snot out of me—Steve Rogers may have come from a time when there was no laws against men beating their wives, but he was too much of a gentlemen—too much a good guy—to actually beat the snot out of me. _

_It was odd that he would pair us up, I wasn't loyal to SHIELD and Steve hadn't made any motion about being loyal SHIELD though he was being a good soldier—it wouldn't last long as SHIELD had too many secrets and such for Steve to really feel comfortable. _

_Ah well, no one could really understand what goes through Fury's mind on a daily basis._

* * *

"Here," Hope thrust some of Clint's old tops into Steve's arms—for some reason Clint enjoyed dumping his old tops on Hope as he knew that she would wear his t-shirts. "You stick out like a sore thumb, you can keep the trousers until we take you shopping to get something more modern."

Steve blinked down at the dark tops with various faded patterns on them before looking up to ask something of Hope only to blush and stumble as he spun quickly around—she was taking her top off!

"You really are a 40s man," she sounded deeply amused as he heard her shuffle through her drawers.

"Modesty is an old-fashioned thing then?" his voice cracked embarrassingly.

"Na," she answered as he heard clothes being pulled onto skin. "There is still some modesty in the world, not much, but some. I just have none."

"Right," he replied making her laugh lightly.

"Change tops already," she startled him by placing her hand on his shoulder—making her snicker. "We're going out to see some of my friends."

"Right," he swallowed and did as she told him too awkwardly as she packed her bag and slung it over her shoulder—she had changed into jeans that raised low on her hips and a faded red t-shirt with some sort of design on it, she had stuffed her feet into some sneakers with mismatched soaks and seemed wholly unconcerned that her silver arm was in clear view and made him wonder if nothing surprised modern people any more.

* * *

Cars weren't as common back in his day as they seemed to be now. Hope had led him to a slim dark car—obviously very modern—and had slipped into the driver's seat with ease—obviously it was more common for women to drive now.

He winced as the engine rumbled to life as the radio came on and blasted horribly modern music that Hope sung along too—she wasn't a good singer—and told him that it was called alternative music before pulling out of the underground garage and on to the almost packed road.

There was no shift-stick Steve realised as Hope slid in and out of the roads and between cars, taking risks that made him attempt to brake making her laugh lightly as she drove out of the city.

There was no hesitate in her motions as she drove, and she didn't seem to be looking at any of the signs as she drove—obviously she knew the route well.

"What's your feelings on mutants?" she asked suddenly.

"What?" Steve asked stupidly making her shot him a small look of annoyance before she returned her gaze back to the road.

"What's your feelings on mutants?" she asked again, slowly this time like he was being dim making him flush.

"What are mutants?" Steve asked because he had never dealt with 'mutants' in the war or before.

"Never mind," she shook her head. "Just don't freak out alright?"

"Okay," he said warily.

* * *

Where-ever Steve had been expecting Hope to take them, it wasn't a school. He kept his silence as they drove up the drive-way of Xavier's School of the Gifted before Hope killed the engine and finally there was blessed silence from what they now were calling music.

She climbed out of the car just as what Steve could only call a portal appeared—showing what was probably the inside of the school—and a teen darted out, with shockingly bright pink hair and green eyes, straight into Hope's ready arms, who greeted the teen with a fond 'Clarice' before Clarice was followed by a taller teen, male this time, with dark skin and dark hair brushing his broad shoulders.

He stood in easy reach of Hope and barely scowled at her as she reached up to mess up his hair with her surprisingly long and slender fingers as she greeted him with an equally fond 'James'.

Steve could understand why Hope had asked him not to freak out, he had never seen anyone like the girl before in his life. So these were mutants.

James had noticed Steve before Clarice and stared at him with wary dark eyes as Hope pulled back, though she left one arm wrapped around Clarice's slim shoulders, and gave Steve a look of pure threat and warning—Fury may have made them partners but Hope's loyalty already belonged to the mutant teens and Steve knew from the look in her duo-coloured eyes that she wouldn't hesitate in putting one of her blades concealed on her body through his eye and into his brain if he, in anyway, threated them or caused them harm in any shape or form.

That type of loyalty reminded him of Bucky, of the Commandos, of Peggy, so Steve just smiled at the two teens and his partner that strangely only made his partner look more distrusting of him—Fury had really given him a difficult partner, hadn't he?

(Steve had the vague thought that it could be some type of revenges for him taking out some of his agents and making him have to track him down in the middle of Times Square in New York)

* * *

If Steve thought the future was strange before, he definitely thought it was insane now as he watched with wide-eyes as teens walked through the halls of Xavier's school with some of them showing examples of amazing powers—powers straight out of a comic book.

There was an ease to Hope that wasn't there in SHIELD and it was obvious that she was well-known as many would pause to talk to her for a bit or offer her a warm greeting as they hurried to their next class.

"You know," Clarice was walking backwards so she could look at both him and James, one of her hands linked with Hope's so she could led the younger woman. "You look like Captain America from the comics and the old movies that Logan has."

"Logan has Captain America movies?" Hope sounded very amused making James smirk from beside him.

"He does," he nodded making Hope flash him a smile over her shoulder.

"Well, he did fight in the war," Hope paused and looked back at Steve thoughtfully. "You actually may know him."

"Maybe," Steve wasn't looking forward to seeing someone he may have fought with as an old man.

"I thought I smelt you," a gruff male voice came from above and it sounded familiar so Steve's head snapped up to see James Logan looking the same as he did almost seventy years ago looking down at them on the stairs.

"Logan!" Hope greeted as she bounded up the stairs and easily wrapped her arms around him, but Logan's gaze had moved to Steve.

"Captain Steve Rogers," he stated with one arm wrapping around Hope's slim waist. "You look good for a dead guy."

"And you look good for an old guy," Steve said in turn making Hope muffle a laugh in Logan's shoulder and Logan smirked.

He had fought with James Logan, they hadn't been close but they knew each other in passing. James Logan kept close to Victor Creed and Steve kept close to Bucky.

* * *

_It was strange watching Steve and Logan share drinks as Logan got the Captain up-to-date to the goings on in the world._

_Neither could get more than a slightly buzz from the alcohol they were sharing as their metabolisms ran too fast to actually get drunk. _

_Still it gave me plenty of time to catch-up with the goings on in Xavier's, play a few games with the younger kids and made sure everything was going alright for Clarice and James and if they heard from Bishop—he was already on a crusade to save mutants from various camps._

_I would have helped him, but Fury would explode if I tried. _

* * *

"Why are you with SHIELD?" Steve asked much later that night as she drove them back to SHIELD HQ.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You're loyal to Xavier's, so why are you with SHIELD?" Steve asked again.

Hope's jaw clenched and Steve was about to say sorry for asking when she spoke.

"Before 2007, I didn't exist really," she said. "I was found by SHIELD after they attacked my transport—I had been a prisoner and experiment for the last two years—and that set me up with a life though there was a catch—SHIELD basically owes me, I'm an experiment Super-Soldier, and they will never let me slip through their claws." She glanced at him then. "I don't have a choice Steve, from the moment they found me I didn't have a choice, and neither do you really. SHIELD basically owes us."

Steve frowned at that.

"Neither of us has a choice, do we?" he asked quietly and Hope shook her head in agreement. "They won't owe us forever."

Hope gave him a look that told him what exactly she thought of his seemingly naïve and optimistic comment.

"I hate optimistic people," she grumbled as she drove making Steve smile.

It wasn't Steve being optimistic, it was a promise. Someday Steve would make sure they were free from SHIELD—or as free as one possibly could be from SHIELD.


	9. Chapter 9

If Nick Fury had any idea the amount of trouble Hope would turn out to be, he may have decided to leave that convoy of trucks alone—he wouldn't have because he still had enough of a heart not to leave a girl, of unattainable age, to the mercy of Hydra.

She wasn't as placid like Coulson was, didn't have the quietness of Barton and couldn't lie as easily as Romanoff but when in a fight she was brutal and had enough grim determination to keep fighting against all odds that Fury had to admire.

She didn't have the loyalty to SHIELD like Hill did, her loyalty was to the few agents that bothered to get to know her and crack her angry-shell—like Coulson, Barton, Romanoff and Rogers—and the mutants of Xavier's. Fury wasn't concerned with her betraying them for he had agreed as long as she fought for SHIELD than he would keep an eye on Xavier's and keep the major threats away—something she knew he didn't have to offer her as she was basically owed by SHIELD.

She had an honesty about her that was unique amongst SHIELD agents and yet she could lie without blinking and bullshit her way through things—like being among the group that found Thor—and was horribly blunt that he was sure she could have actually hurt his agents' feelings if she actually tried.

She wasn't the most skilled fighter around, but she was fast and brutal with strong hits that he knew could do a lot more damage than the broken bones she had dealt other agents—Fury knew she was stronger than Rogers, though how strong he didn't know as she had learnt to keep things close to her chest.

She had a hatred of Hydra that made Fury both trust her with his mission to one day destroy them and wary of having her involved as he could see her going off the rails at the men that had done experiments on her—something he wasn't sure if he wanted to happen or not yet.

There was a childish side—that could be very large and annoying—to her that he was surprised had survived all the shit she had been through.

Fury both trusted her and didn't, and he knew that she felt the same about him.

* * *

Somehow Fury wasn't surprised to seeing Hope lying flat on her back as she played with her DS while Rogers repeatedly punched a reinforced punching-bag further away in the very old-style gym.

The Captain had been big team-building things such as training together, sparring together, eating together and other such things that made Hope complain horribly when he first insisted on them but always ended up doing because Rogers cheated by using his big blue eyes on her—her own words, not his.

"Warning, warning, Captain Fun-Kill has entered, I repeat, Captain Fun-Kill has entered," Hope did a very poor attempt at a robot voice and his eyebrow twitched slightly—he should have never let Stark be alone with her as since they made their friendship Hope had been extra annoying.

Rogers steadied his bag and looked at him with the respect of a soldier while Hope didn't even glance away from her screen as her DS played the annoyingly cheerful background music of one of her Pokémon games that she almost constantly played.

Fury didn't even snap at her to pay attention as she had an uncanny ability to listen while she appeared to be ignoring everything and Rogers would inform her of anything important with the patience of a saint if she did end up missing anything.

So Fury just explained briefly what was happening and was turning away when Hope spoke up.

"Where's Clint?" she asked almost off-handily but Fury wasn't fooled.

"Compromised," he informed her and watched as a scowl plastered itself on her pixie-face.

"I'm going to hit that Fucker,"

Fury decided not to ask if she meant Loki or Barton and left.

* * *

"Dr Banner,"

Part of him wanted to jump as he was unused to being called anything but Doctor and he had learnt to never like it when a soldier called out to him—even if that soldier was Captain America—and another part flared in annoyance as he took in the perfect super-soldier that would always happen because of his mistake that led to the other guy.

"Oh hey," he twisted with his hands slightly. "They told me that you would be here."

The other guy only gave a bit of vague curiosity at that back of his mind as his only warning.

"BOO!" A girl's voice shouted behind him making Steve look like he wanted to hit himself in the face and Natasha to warily smirk as she watched him.

Bruce's first impression of the woman that simply introduced herself as Hope? She was either very brave or very stupid, he had decided before he had even turned to take in her petite frame and saw her duo-coloured eyes looking up at him almost innocently as she held a sticker-covered DS in her tiny hands—he wasn't fooled.

She didn't wear a uniform like everyone else, like Steve she was dressed almost casually though her casual was very different to the casual of a 40s man. She wore two different coloured vests—one white and one black—that showed of all of her silver arm and skinny dark faded jeans low on her hips with her feet stuffed into flat boots.

Simple silver rings decorated the slim fingers of her right hand and her dark hair had been pulled back into a ponytail that showed off the three stud piercings in each of her lobes.

She peered up at him curiously.

"Not even a hint of green?" she sounded strangely disappointed as she voiced that and for some odd reason Bruce relaxed slightly. "Respect for your control."

"Hope," Steve sighed resignedly as he pulled her over to his side making her look tinier against the tall form of Captain America. "I'm sorry, I would like to say she wasn't always like this but I would be lying."

Hope just smiled at him from beside Steve, there wasn't a hint of shame on her face.

"Okay," he answered almost awkwardly.

* * *

"Hope, suit up," Steve called as he was leaving.

"What?" she asked absently as she attempted to act like didn't hear what was going on.

"You're going to Germany," Fury stated in his deep voice.

"But—" she was cut off as Steve plucked her out of her seat and threw her over his shoulder making all the air leave her in a gush—it was something that he had only recently adopted to doing to Hope when she decided to play the difficult card. "I don't want to go to Germany!"

Steve ignored her as he marched out of the bridge.

"Steve!"

"Still think it was a stupid idea for teaming them up?" Fury asked Hill and smirked as she rolled her eyes.

* * *

"I don't know why I'm here," Hope complained to Natasha making her smirk as they flew the Quinjet—she didn't like flying at all, didn't like to be the one behind the controllers and hated that Steve and Tasha decided that they didn't need another agent as her co-pilot. "You know I hate flying, heights and other such crap."

"We're helping you get over such fear," Tasha said.

"Bullshit," she snorted. "You just like to watch me sweat in fear."

"Maybe a little," Tasha admitted easily.

"I hate you both," she declared, hearing Steve's chuckle echo in her ear-piece.

"Love you too Hope," Natasha countered.

* * *

_The egos of men would be the downfall of the world and be one of the reasons that the Avengers could crash and burn. _

_Tony couldn't stand Steve because of Howard Stark, Steve couldn't stand Tony for the same reason and Thor was too busy attempting to bring Loki back to whatever senses he had and back home to care that he had basically started a mini-war._

_At the moment I hated Natasha as she had mentioned how I knew both Thor and Tony and would probably stop their little fight, and I hated Steve for strapping me to his chest like a child and jumping out of the Quinjet—I screamed like a little girl as we fell. _

_Than Steve had the nerve to tell me to stay back as he decided on the fall that he could handle it himself. The bastard._

* * *

"Guys, you know this forest is most likely protected right?" Hope asked in the silent staring match between the three men with the egos the size of countries were having.

"Hope!" Thor cheered as he absently rubbed some dirt off his cheek and walking towards her with wide arms. "How's my tiny yellow mouse counterpart?"

Steve shot a look to Tony and mouthed 'tiny yellow mouse counterpart?' making Tony smirk before he mouthed back 'pokémon' and was surprised with the look of understanding that passed over the Capsicle's face, though he shouldn't have been since he obviously friends with Hope—her pokémon obsession was kind of worrying.

"Kicking ass," she said as she let him pull her into his muscular arms—well she didn't really have a choice in the matter but she liked to delude herself sometimes. "Like you just were."

"I didn't know you knew these men," Thor said with one arm still wrapped firmly around her shoulders.

"Yeah, they're friends," she told him with a smile to the staring Tony and Steve—they were almost gaping at them. "So are we going to stop fighting and start working together, boys?"

She grinned at the noises of affirmative each of the towering men made—what power a petite woman had over a towering soldier, bulky god and cocky billionaire.

"Good, so who's getting the prisoner that you all left alone when you had your pissing-contest?"

* * *

She didn't bother joining the others at the brig as she had a warning to give a certain trickster god.

"Alien," she greeted blithely as came to a stop in front of his glass cage.

"I'm a God," Loki sneered at her, green eyes almost completely shadowed by brilliant blue.

"You come from outer space, so sorry to break it to you luv, but you're an alien," she smiled at him.

"What can I do for the woman forsaken by Death?" Loki asked, obviously trying to get under her skin.

"Really?" she gave him a look that she was sure made his eyebrow twitch. "That's pitiful."

"So was your form under the might of the Destroyer," he sneered—again.

"Yawn," she waved her hand in front of her face. "Sorry, your wit is so over-powering that I think I'm about to fall asleep."

"What do you want?" he finally asked with frustration.

"I'm here to give you a warning," she told him.

"You're threatening me?" he looked amused.

"Nope, I'm warning you," she let her smile sharpen. "If Fury's little team crashes-and-burns like you hope and everyone with a brain thinks, I just want you to know that I'll still wade into whatever battleground you chose, beat the shit out of whatever freaky alien army you bring and put a bullet through your head."

"How heroic,"

"It's not heroism, it's all about survival really," she shrugged easily. "Better the master you know after all."

"You're their attack-dog than?"

"You could say that," she agreed easily. "When I do put that bullet through your head, I'll be smiling by the way."

"You'd die before you'd reach me," he stated rather foolishly making her laugh.

"I'm forsaken by Death remember? I'm more immortal than you are."

* * *

"_Professor? Can you hear me? Professor Xavier! Can you bloody hear me?"_

"_**Loud and clear, Hope."**_

"_Keep everyone away from New York, perhaps even in the bunkers?"_

"_**Loki?"**_

"_Yeah. Don't let Clarice, James, Logan or any of the others come help me. I'll be fine."_

"_**I'll be watching and I give no promises, Hope."**_

"_Fair enough."_

* * *

She perched herself on one of the tables in the lab that Tony and Bruce had claimed and smiled at Tony as he walked over.

She could feel Bruce's curious gaze on them as Tony started messing with her left arm and barely grimaced as her arm clicked out its metal socket.

"How's the nerves?" Tony asked idly as he carefully set the arm down before twirling and heading to one of the black box-cases that he hadn't opened yet.

"Sore," she answered easily as she watched Tony's clever hands unclip the case and lifted the lid to reveal a brand new shiny silver arm.

"You know, the timing and specs of this arm makes me kind of suspicious," Tony turned to her with a smirk. "Like you knew this would happen."

"You think I'm working with Loki?" she raised her eyebrows at him.

"Nope," he denied easily. "We all saw your little show-down with him, you don't like him or respect him so you wouldn't follow him at all. But I think you know a lot more than you ever let on."

She grunted as he near-shoved her new arm in place and her nerves burned briefly as they attached themselves to the new arm.

"And if I do?" she challenged as Tony tinkered to make sure it was firmly in place and would work for her.

"Then I would ask you why you are keeping silent," Tony looked at her with serious dark eyes.

"Perhaps I believe I'll make things worse if I speak up, perhaps I believe it would arrogant of me to knew how to make things better," she answered equally serious, keeping her tone as low as Tony's so Bruce couldn't hear—he was pretending to be busy searching for the cube despite the fact he kept glancing at them with curiosity clear on his face.

"What if you make things worse by not speaking up?" Tony asked. "What if you damn us by keeping your silence?"

"I'm not going to let anyone I care about die, Tony," she stated fiercely.

"And what about the innocent civilians?" he challenged. "I know you care little for people that aren't people you care for or trust."

"Isn't that why you're the heroes?" she cocked her head to the side as she idly clenched her left hand. "I'm only here to make sure you guys survive, you care about the civilians and I care about you guys, that's the only reason I've been assigned to this little team."

He stared at her for a moment, hard and unblinking, before looking down at her left arm and pointed to a near-invisible silver button in the middle of her forearm.

"Press there and you'll get your blade arm," he pressed it and they watched as two blades clicked off from her forearm and joined together over her hand to form one sharp blade. "The vials are stored in a freeze-pocket here."

He tapped the inner part of her bicep.

"It's not over is it?" he asked quietly with a resigned air.

"You knew it wasn't the moment you confronted me, Tony," she stated simply making him nod.

"Stark! Banner!" Fury's stern voice snapped them out of their little staring contest. "What the hell are you doing? You're meant to be searching for the cube?"

And Hope kept her mouth shut as slowly the others crowded the room and voices were raised with harsh words spoken.

She braced herself and closed her eyes as Bruce moved to look at the screen tracking the cube and was one of the few that didn't go flying as the carrier shuddered.

_So it beginnings, _she thought and while Steve and Tony raced off to save the ship and Fury ran to the brig, Hope went to find Coulson.

* * *

"Phil!"

Both Loki and Coulson looked up at that shout to see Hope standing there, blood dripping from the blade that was somehow part of her left arm and bullet holes in her tops.

"Fucker," she growled dangerously, duo-coloured eyes narrowed on Loki and Coulson almost smiled at how easily the petite girl could shroud herself in a dangerous air, and decided to make good on her distraction and blasted Loki through the wall.

"Huh, so that's what it does," he near-wheezed as blood fell from his mouth and suddenly Hope was crouched beside him, a scowl on her pixie-like face as she fiddled with her left arm.

"You idiot," she hissed at him, worry and slightly panic swarming in her eyes as part of her arm came off with a hiss of cool air and a number of small metal/glass vials with needles already attached clattered on to the metal-grid floor.

She ignored the cool air coming from her left arm and she ripped his shirt open.

"I liked this shirt," he complained lightly, vision doubling and blacking out at the edges.

"You have a dozen just like this one," she countered as she pulled the plastic casing off the needle of one of the vials before stabbing it down next to his wound, she did that with the other five.

"What?" he asked as he blinked down at his bare chest at the metal/glass vials well something thick and red made its way into his body.

"My blood, non-toxic of course," she smiled at him, moving him so he was resting against her and not the uncomfortable metal wall. "I gave Tony a few pints when he was dying to help him fight back the poison and he had some left over that he gave me."

Awkwardly she fiddled the panelling back in place on her arm to stop the cool air from escaping, before reaching up with to her ear-piece.

"I need medics in the containment room, Coulson is down, I repeat Coulson is down, I need medics."

His lips twitched slight as his head lulled onto her shoulder. She almost sounded like a true agent than.

He was tired and Hope had him, she would make sure he survived this he knew so he let himself drift off.

* * *

_Coulson would have died and been brought back in a horrible painfully way. I spared him that. My blood healed most, if not all, of the damaged caused by Loki and the medics hardly had to do anything._

_He would be out of it for a few days though, his body unused to the major healing that it did in such a short amount of time and thus he was tired out._

_But the main point was that Coulson lived, the first SHIELD agent that was kind to me and had kept a watch over me. The first SHIELD agent to genuinely care for me and the first agent I actually trusted._

_Now all we had to do was kick Loki's ass, defeat an alien army and close a giant black hole/wormhole thing. Simple, huh?_


	10. Chapter 10

Hope grimaced as she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she didn't pull off the tight cat-suit like Natasha. Natasha had curves and well Hope didn't have much too speak of.

She tied her hair back into a tight ponytail as she briefly wondered why she grew it out so long, it was brushing the end of her shoulder blades, and her gaze paused on the tarnished silver chain around her neck.

_Mum._

She shook of the memories, she couldn't afford to get distracted after all.

A whistle behind her made her roll her eyes as she saw Tony standing in his beat-up armour with his helmet tucked under his arm.

"Nice," he gave an overly done wink at her.

"Really?" she gave him a look that said 'seriously?' and Tony smirked.

"I'm helping your ego," he told her.

"My ego doesn't need helping," she countered. "Why are you here?"

"I'm about to head off to Loki and wondered if you wanted me to do anything, like take a certain DS to safety?" he raised her eyebrows.

"Keep it in your bar," she told him as she handed over the sticker covered DS. "Your bar survives everything."

He mockingly saluted and left her.

She sighed and grabbed a belt of knives, Bucky and Logan had taught her to get close and personal in her fights and she hated the loud bang of guns so she preferred her knives.

* * *

"Here,"

A belt was shoved under her nose and she blinked up at Steve.

"What?" she asked and Steve rolled his eyes—one of the modern gestures he had picked up easily it seemed.

"It's for you, put it on," he near ordered making _her_ roll her eyes as she reached out for it and her breath caught in her throat as the light made the silver around the black X wink. "I asked the Professor for one, you should be one of them and it's only right that you wear that symbol in battle."

"Perhaps I can get them some good news-time," she half smiled as she clipped it around her.

"You'll ruin it by opening your mouth," Clint automatically shot at her, breaking out of his funk of woe at being mind-controlled by Loki, and both Steve and Natasha laughed—the traitors.

* * *

Charles Xavier steeled his fingers in front of his mouth as the screen filled of images of New York—thanks to Jones for hacking through into the cameras that filled New York.

His sharp blue gaze moved to where Logan was brooding, his mind whirling with different ways of going and helping Hope. James flanked him, strong hand clasped in Clarice's as her green gaze seemed glued to the screen as the Quinjet that they all knew that Hope was in crash-landed.

"Not very good flier, huh?" Eric asked softly, smiling at the angry glare that Logan shot at him across the room and Charles bit back a sigh—truly Eric enjoyed baiting his X-Men too much, especially Logan.

"Is she okay?" Rogue's whisper carried through the tightly packed room as she pressed closer to Bobby with Jimmy close beside her—Jimmy had formed a quick friendship with Rogue as his powers stopped hers and slowly they were both learning how to control them together.

"She's fine," Blindfold answered though she reached out to grip one of the triples' hands—it was still strange for Charles to look into the faces of three of his young students and see the proud face of Emma Frost stare back at him with her glacier blue gaze. "Hardly a bump."

"Elf," Logan's gruffly asked and Kurt, Nightcrawler as he was once called in the circus, looked up with curious golden eyes at Logan's usual nickname for him. "If things go too south, you better go and get her."

Kurt nodded just as one of the children gasped as one of the aliens blasted Hope in the chest.

Xavier just caught sight of the small object—a necklace he knew—fall to the ground and almost pitied the alien as Hope looked at it with murder in her gaze—she was very protective of the pictures of her mother.

* * *

Hope ignored the metallic scrapping sound that came from her left arm—she had tucked her broken necklace into the freeze-space for safe-keeping—and ripped the gun from one of the alien's—frankly she didn't think the deserved her even thinking their name—and stabbed him brutally in the throat with the blade left hand.

Natasha may have almost easily figured out how to fire the damn gun, but Hope was perfectly happy with using it as a club or bat as she battered the aliens into bloody messes.

She held it in her right hand and brutally made her way through the dumb aliens that dared to challenge her or attempt to kill her—she ignored the screaming of the civilians and questioned why people wanted to be heroes as all they had to deal with was screaming civilians, dangerous villains, being accused by the very public that they saved, end up with huge property-damage debt and normally died young.

"Tony," she grunted as she twisted her left hand into the back of the neck of one of the alien. "Better keep an eye out for the Council making a stupid-ass decision like sending a nuke."

"They wouldn't sent a nuke," Steve automatically protested while Natasha and Clint kept their silence as they took down multiple opponents—both of the agents knew the extremes that the Council would go in the name of peace.

"Right, we'll do," came Tony's answer and Hope was glad to know that he knew that she was serious in her warning.

* * *

Clarice was almost fully bitten through her lower lip as she stared at the screen, hands itching to help the woman that had saved her and James so many years ago.

A straggled sound left her throat as she saw one of the things—aliens apparently—throw their gun-staff over Hope's head and pulled her back tightly against them with the gun-staff tight against her throat.

Automatically Hope's right hand dropped the gun-staff she had stolen and had been using as a bat and reached up to claw at the gun-staff attempting to cut off her air as her left swung back and stabbed at any bit of body she could reached.

The raging green monster—the Hulk apparently and Hope's teammate—appeared and reached out rip the alien off her back, gun-staff breaking the skin of her throat—revealing muscle, silver bone and blood—and Hope cut off one of his hands so that the Hulk could properly throw it to its death without taking her head with it.

Hope turned with a grin to the towering beast, blood-stained teeth bared in the grin of thrill of battle, and he grinned back, carefully patting her on top her head with two of his large fingers, with the same feelings.

Logan grunted, looking vaguely approving, and crossed his muscular arms across his broad-chest.

* * *

"What the hell is this?" Hope poked at the food, that had been delivered to them on paper-plates as the owners of the little take-out brushed up broken glass and such, in disgust.

"Shawarma," Tony asked with a tired smirk on his battered face as he took a bite of the meaty dish.

"Why couldn't we go for Chinese? I like Chinese," Hope asked as she grimaced at all the different meats she could see.

"I wanted shawarma and as the only one that died today, I think I should have my wish fulfilled," Tony declared with only a trace of his usual arrogance making Steve shake his head and Natasha rolled her eyes.

"I probably should have died over a dozen times today," Hope countered as she lifted her paper-plate and handed it to Thor, who smiled as he took it.

"You're supposed deaths don't count," Tony sniffed making her bark out a laugh as she tiredly leaned against Steve.

Bruce quietly ate his own meal, his face tired but slightly amused at the banter that Tony and Hope exchanged so the meal wasn't completely awkward.

Hope seemed set on doing nothing as they ate, leaning tiredly against Steve with her eyes closed. Steve moved very carefully as he ate so he wouldn't dislodge his partner that was almost asleep.

Clint thought that when Hope was almost asleep that she looked like the young woman that they had found and saved, the girl that laughed at his weak pokémon as she won each battle and slapped away his hands from her fries.

* * *

Loki glared down at the petite woman as she fixed a sign around his neck as Thor gave goodbyes to his new friends.

Hope just smiled up at him after she made sure her sign was straight and stepped back, Steve's gaze trained on her back like they are still on a mission and he was ready to defend her back if she needed it—it was kind of cute having a partner really.

She read the sign once more and gave a firm nod before she went to say goodbye to Thor.

Thor swept her up in a large hug and she almost could feel her metal-cased bones groan from the strength he was using so hugged him back with almost equal strength.

He let her drop to her feet and smiled.

"We'll see each other again," he declared and Hope believed him.

"Be careful of Elves," she warned him seriously and a look crossed his face that told her he would be taking her seriously before he laughed like she just said a joke.

He turned to go to his brother and her hands shot out to grip his arm which made him look at her in question as he took in the tension that tightened her face.

"Tell your mother that you love her, you'll never know how much time you have left with her," she told him and Thor looked over his shoulder and took in the sign that Hope had made sure to hang around his brother's neck.

'I'm sorry and I still love you Mum' it read in bold and clear handwriting and nodded his head seriously to his friend as he knew that she was warning him for a reason.

Thor knew that Hope knew more about things then she let on and she was fearful of speaking of them, it was clear in the way she spoke to him the first time they met, and knew it was important if she broke her oath of silence.

Then again, Mothers were a sensitive subject for her.

"I will," he vowed and her face relaxed as she let go of his arm, she stepped back and Steve's hand rested on her shoulder in silent comfort.

Hope watched as Thor and Loki left earth and they were all saying their own goodbyes, Natasha handed Bruce his bag and he placed it in Tony's car.

The billionaire had said he would drive the doctor to the airport though Hope knew that he would really be taking him back to Stark Tower.

Natasha and Clint were going to stop in and visit Coulson before they cashed in their holidays for some relaxation far away from America and the demanding press.

Steve was finally going to go see old friends though he was dropping her off at Xavier's first, she had told him that she could go with him if he wanted and he had smiled—that horribly innocent boy scout smile—and said he would call her if he needed her but she should have time with her family.

She had fallen silent at that touched that he had called them her family, something she thought and felt but had never told him, and realised that this was what it meant to be in a partnership like Natasha's and Clint's and how it was probably loads of peoples' dreams to be Captain America's partner.

* * *

_I like to think I'm not a coward, how could I be a coward after all that I lived through and the battles I had thrown myself into like a reckless person—being basically immortal seemed to make one reckless—and yet sometimes I felt like a coward._

_I feel like a coward when I look at Rogue and Bobby, so happy and in love and able to touch as Rogue learnt to keep her power in her hands, and I realised that sometime in the next eleven odd years that Rogue would be dead and Bobby would be fighting an endless war against killer robots. _

_I feel like a coward when I see Logan standing in front of Jean's and Scott's graves and know I could have done something. _

_I feel like a coward every time that Steve falls silent, deep pain in his bright blue eyes, and know he's thinking about Bucky and I don't tell him that he's still alive, that he's mostly okay despite being in Hydra's hands, that the people we worked with could be Hydra, that in two short years he was going to be confronted with his once believed dead best friend as he attempts to kill him._

_I feel like a coward when I dream of Wanda and Pietro and I realise I haven't once searched for them, my first friends in this life, and I realise that I have no idea what their fate is. _

_I feel like a coward when I see bombings being put down as Terrorists and know that it's really A.I.M and I know the crap that's heading Tony's way and I know that I won't interfere in case I accidently get him or Pepper or Rhodey killed. _

_I feel like a coward when I stare into Clarice's bright green eyes and James' dark eyes and realise that their lives would be hell in the next eleven years._

_It's worse to look in to their eyes and know their fates, know how many times they should have been killed but are only save because of Kitty. Clarice and James were mine, they were my kids like Rogue and I was Logan's kids, and they had been mine from the moment I saw them as pre-teens and saw how fearful they were, how James was willingly to protect Clarice with his life if he needed too, and how they almost reminded me of myself._

_I took them, rescued them like I had hoped someone would rescue me before SHIELD turned up and saved me. _

_I feel like a coward when I look at them and wish that I wouldn't have to watch them run for their lives and freedom, when I wish that I'm long gone so I don't have to watch their fear come back into their eyes._

* * *

"'ello Professor," she greeted as she watched the kids play tag making it more fun and challenging by running through Clarice's portals.

"Hope," he greeted warmly as she had to smile as this reminded her of their talk so long ago.

"Another private chat?" she asked as she glanced up at him.

"I couldn't help overhearing your worries," he admitted and she almost laughed. "You're not being a coward Hope."

A bitter smile twisted her lips as she returned her gaze to the playing kids.

"Yes I am," was her simple reply.

"You know my history with Eric, probably better that Logan does, and you know I did little to stop him walk down his path," he glanced down at her seated form, one leg stretched out in front of her and one leg tucked against her chest with her arms circling it, with bright blue eyes. "I knew what he was doing, I could have attempted to stop him but I didn't. Does that make me a coward?"

"Some people would say yes,"

"I'm asking what you think Hope,"

"You and Eric were close, you saved each other's lives, helped each other grow, you two were the start of all this," she waved her hand to the freely running children and teens, all mutants some physically mutated as well as gifted. "To not be able to stop him, and we both knew until now he would have to be killed to be stopped, is so understandable that I can't think of you as a coward for not wanting to kill your friend, your brother."

"You look at Clarice and James, and you see your children staring back," he said softly. "You have watched over them as much as you were able to with SHIELD limiting you, you saved them and made sure they would continue to be safe. You know their fates and like any mother you don't want to see such hard fates fall upon them, you fear trying to stop it in case you make everything worse by trying to help them and I can understand that, I knew how you feel.

Because of you, I knew what would befall Jean and Scott and yet I did nothing with that knowledge as I was as fearful as you that I could make it worse and I regret that. It is not a crime to fear, Hope, and in the end it's up to you what you do with your knowledge."

"I'll regret not helping them but if I do, I'll fear every day that I made it worse for them."

"I cannot tell you want to do, it has to be your choice,"

Hope let out a sigh.

"Either way I'm damning them," she looked up at him, frustration clear on her face. "I am selfish enough to wish that I didn't have the choice, that I was told or given a sign to show what I should do."

"We chose our own fate, Hope," he told her. "It's what makes us human."

* * *

_Humans have free-will, it gives us choices on how we live our lives. _

_Free-will was something that I had always believed in, mostly because I believed there was no higher power that bent us to its whims. But that was before this, before this hell, and I can't help but wonder if there are really higher beings that aren't aliens like Thor and the Asgardians._

_Probably because of my love of Percy Jackson and fondness of the old Greek myths, I can't help but think of the three fates spinning their tapestries filled of threads of peoples' lives and I wonder if I could actually change things at all if there was higher beings like them planning and weaving everyone's' lives._

_Bad things happened to those that tried to fight against fate._

_How could I live with myself if I did something and doomed everyone I loved because of it? _

_I guess in the end, I'm still the coward that hadn't wanted to wake up and face my new reality. _

* * *

**_AN: I have a poll on my profile for Hope's powers in her X-Men life, you have till the end of this story which will probably be in a few more chapters to vote._**


	11. Chapter 11

_2013, the year of change. It was the year that Steve, Natasha and I went to DC, the year that Clint went deep undercover somewhere, the year the Avengers were still getting over the fact that Tony had destroyed all his suits—some part of me would always blame Pepper for that._

* * *

"And so it begins,"

Fury didn't even twitch at the suddenness of Hope's voice behind him. He just frowned at the screen in front of him like he didn't hear her.

But he did, and he knew. Hydra was making their move.

"I'm going to protect him," she informed him easily, though he could see the tension in her shoulders from the reflection off the screen.

She wasn't as at ease as she was making herself out to be, but Fury couldn't really blame her. She was finally going to confront her torturers and was going to act as Rogers' shield as she did because they both knew that Hydra would be gunning for Captain America.

"Will you be alright?" he asked almost blandly and he saw her smile in the reflection.

"Does it really matter?"

No, not really. As long as she did her duty, he didn't mind. If that made him heartless, well so be it.

* * *

_Did it honestly matter if I was alright? I was going to be facing Bucky, my friend and teacher, and part of me hated the thought of facing him because I knowingly left him in the hands of Hydra, I spent the last few years with relative freedom while he was probably being tortured. And I hated myself for that._

* * *

Guns had never been one of Hope's friends. They felt too heavy in her right hand and part of her would always cringe at the sound of it going off—stirring up of memories of cool metal pressed against her forehead, the panic that made her heart almost burst, the ringing that barely echoed in her ears as a sudden pain destroyed her, a brief moment of nothing and then pain as her brain healed, repaired and new breath filled her lungs.

Most people would think she would prefer guns as they made killing almost impersonal and yet she preferred knives. Knives she could control and aim properly, guns were a hit or miss in her hands.

She liked her knives, liked that comforting feeling in her hand. She didn't like when the slick blood made it difficult to grasp the handle, didn't like her hands slipping as she stabbed down as blood splattered her face.

She didn't like that she was a murderer, but she was what they made her, what she made herself. She was a survivor and something she thought she would do anything to make sure she survived and that scared her.

Would she let her friends, family, die just so she could survive? She liked to think no, she would throw herself in front of them to protect their fragile bodies, and if she died for one of them so what? Well, at least she died doing something right and good.

* * *

_Xavier once told me he didn't think I could really die until I did what I was meant to, like I had some type of destiny to fulfil. _

_What type of destiny could I have? I had just been a simple girl until I died and then I was stuck here._

_Not as fun as most fans believe. Trust me._

* * *

Steve was a soldier, a soldier from a time where people were more honest and open. He wasn't a spy, he would always feel uncomfortable around them because they watched, always picking out weaknesses, and they hid secrets. And they lied so easily, too easily.

Steve didn't like Fury, didn't trust him much either. Steve liked Natasha, or the face that she showed them, and he mostly trusted her to have his back. He liked Clint and trusted him about the same as Natasha.

Hope was his partner, she wasn't really a spy though she had her own secrets. She lied easily when she had too, but was mostly bluntly honest in a way that he liked because he missed good old fashioned honesty—he could have done with her being less blunt though.

But she wasn't a soldier like him, she didn't turn off her mind and followed orders like he had learnt to in the war. She kept aware, kept wary eyes open and he knew she questioned orders, that she would undermined them if she thought she needed too, though he also knew that she would follow orders well-enough, she knew that others had more experience than her and gave certain orders for a reason.

She wasn't loyal to SHIELD—Steve wasn't that loyal either but they had found him, given him a place in this crazy world and Peggy had helped create it so it couldn't be all bad, could it?—and he was almost certain that if a time came that she had to choose, she would always pick Xavier's.

Steve liked Hope, trusted her a lot, and he liked to think he knew her well.

He didn't buy her excuse for her mild freak-out when they were assigned to DC, he knew she knew something was going to happen, but he kept his silence. He was good at playing dumb.

He didn't say a word about Hope pushing so they had a double apartment for them, didn't say a word when Hope made sure he was always wearing a com and took a gun everywhere, turned a mostly blind eye to the number of blades that she strapped on her body.

He knew she was aware that he wasn't as dumb as people thought, knew that he was aware that something was going on but he didn't yet know what.

And he wouldn't until Fury appeared near dying in their apartment, Hope's gaze wary and guarded though not surprised in any way.

SHIELD was compromised and the only one that Steve really trusted had been subtly—or as subtle as she could ever be—getting him ready for the whole year they were in DC.

* * *

"You knew," Steve stated as he stopped behind where Hope was dangling her legs over the edge.

She didn't ask what it was that she was meant to have known and he didn't clarify as they both knew at the moment he didn't care about SHIELD or Hydra, all he cared about was Bucky Barnes.

"My first memories are being taken by strangers," she told him, her gaze distance. "Hydra used me as an experiment for two years, during that time the Winter Soldier was assigned to teach me how to fight. He was my teacher, protector and friend."

"Did you know he was Bucky?" he asked though he knew the answer, she hadn't been surprised when he said that the Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes.

"Yes," she said almost simply and rage flared in side of him.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked after a moment as betrayal stung him.

"Because I'm still the coward that didn't want to open my eyes and face reality," she paused for a moment and tilted her head back to see him. "I won't let either of you kill each other."

Steve believed her, it was clear in her duo-coloured eyes that she would do anything to save them both. He could imagine her standing between them just to stop them fighting.

He still hadn't forgiven her for keeping Bucky a secret from him.

* * *

He was used to mind-wipes though he hated them, he had learnt not to resist though after god knows how many years he had been in their grip.

There was one person that they had never completely wiped from his mind was Hope, Hope that had been missing and had been taken by their enemies they told him when he asked about her.

Hope that had been with Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff, Hope that had been saved briefly before being taken again apparently.

Hydra wasn't a walk in the park, they weren't kind, but they valued Hope and he had no idea how Hope was treated with this SHIELD, with Steve Rogers—and his familiar eyes—and Natasha Romanoff.

So despite the fact that he was meant to be hunting down and killing the enemies, he was really searching for Hope and if he had to beat or torture the information out of Steve Rogers, so be it.

* * *

Two years she had been under Hydra's hands, had suffered through experiments, training and simulations that had twisted her, hardened her.

Hydra had been grooming her to be a weapon, to be the partner of the Winter Soldier, and SHIELD had continued with that.

They wanted her as a weapon as well though instead of killing off targets that threated their plans they needed her to fight terrorists, aliens and such as Fury waited for Hydra to make their play.

Xavier's hadn't wanted her to be a weapon, they had wanted her to be Hope. They only trained her so she could defend herself and others if needed, they wouldn't ask her to fight but she would have and did for them.

They were amongst the first people that had actually wanted her to be herself, that didn't want her because she was a weapon but because she seemed to need their help and they offered it.

They were kind in a way that Hope hadn't really encountered before in her life.

So that was why she was loyal to Xavier's, that was why she would fight for them and stay away from them to keep them safe, why she would always have a soft-spot for mutants. Because they had wanted Hope, not the weapon she could be.

But Bucky, Wanda, Pietro. Their bond had been build and forged in the depths of Hydra, they understood the torture, the horror, that each of them faced and they had defended each other many times.

Their bond was strong, build on blood and sweat, on kinship and shared experiences. And that was why she would always have a strong bond with them because they were alike, they were closer than family.

And that was why though she wanted to knife the fuck out of Hydra agents, she waited on the carrier where Steve and Bucky would clash.

Steve may have been her partner, he may have been her friend and her team mate, but Bucky was more and that was why she was really here because she knew that if he accidently killed Steve and got his memories back it would destroy him.

It would hurt him a lot just beating into Steve after getting his memories back and she didn't want him to go through that. Also she kind of liked her partner out of the hospital so she would interfere.

* * *

"Bucky," Steve turned and stared into the eyes of his best friend, there was no recognition in their depths and his heart clenched.

"My name is not Bucky," he denied as he stepped forward and Steve realised that he would be fighting his friend, again.

"Yes it is,"

It wasn't Steve that said that but Hope that swung herself up on to walkway with ease though there was a grimace on her face, mostly likely because of the height she had to confront as she waited for them.

Something burnt in his chest as he watched as Bucky's blue eyes lit up with recognition as they met Hope duo-coloured eyes, his hand automatically moving out and she easily slipped her metal hand in his flesh one.

His breath almost caught as he finally saw them standing side-by-side and he realised that Hope had been changed to be like Bucky but better, she was meant to be his equal.

"Hope," Bucky's gaze took in all of her, to see if there was a sign that she had been hurt worse than she had ever been in Hydra and he crowed her with his tall form as a way to protect her from Steve.

"It's going to be okay," she told him as she reached up to touch his face, oh god how she had missed her teacher, her protector, her friend. "I'm okay."

She knew that was important to him, she didn't know what Hydra had told him but there had been a type of rage in his movements once he realised that she was with Steve and Natasha.

"Hydra's going to pay," she told him, a dark lit in her eyes that promised that their work wasn't done. "Steve's telling the truth, your name is Bucky Barnes, you are his best friend, and Steve really should be doing something to stop billions of people being killed."

Steve almost jumped as she glared at him around Bucky and hurriedly did as he had been told.

"We should go," he said as he walked over to them and his heart twisted at the wariness in Bucky's eyes as he stared at him, he had never looked at him like that before, but Hope tugged on his hand and the trio left swiftly while the carriers turned on each other.

* * *

Despite Tony's whining demands as he told them to get their asses back to New York, they stayed for a little while in DC as Natasha had to fend off the government and press, Hope a shadow beside her.

It was kind of funny that Hope was getting more wary looks than the Russian Assassin—an Assassin who had probably killed hundreds and regularly messed with her info so no one knew the truth about her.

Steve and Bucky reconnected and Bucky's memories came back, slower than perhaps Steve would have liked but they were coming back.

Steve was still slightly jealous and put-out that Hope was closer to Bucky than he was and had seemingly replaced him. Natasha had slapped him around the back of the head when he finally confessed what was wrong with him, and bluntly told him that Bucky and Hope had a bond much like she and Clint had, different than his with Bucky's and debatably stronger, and had also told him that she wouldn't be surprised if they started screwing each other.

Hope had choked on her water as she heard that particular comment as Natasha waltzed into the kitchen with Steve trailing behind like a lost, and sad, puppy.

There was an amused twist to Bucky's lips as he helpfully pounded her on the back and both looked at each other in a slightly different light.

They didn't love each other—well they did, but they weren't in love, they weren't like Pepper and Tony—but they understood each other and both were adults with needs. And they trusted each other, so why not?—at least that had been Bucky's argument later, followed swiftly by that he hadn't had sex in years and as far as he knew she was still a virgin and who better to lose it with? She had slapped him and told him bluntly that she wasn't a virgin as she was a twenty-first century girl and really he probably couldn't get up anymore in his old age.

(Bucky had been offended and decided to prove her wrong, she hadn't been complaining)

The girl, the one that had been a big fan of the Avengers, in the back of Hope's head died a blissful death at the thought of actually having sex with Bucky Barnes.

* * *

_Life wasn't all sunshine and rainbows after Hydra had been dealt with a heavy-blow, I didn't suddenly fall completely and madly in love with Bucky and we decided to get married. _

_I very much doubted that the two of us would ever be a couple in that regard._

_Life was harder for a time, Tony having to pull a lot of strings to keep the Avenger team together and running and to get the damn government to back off—well the parts of the government that hadn't been part of Hydra._

_(Tony had told me when we got back to New York that he had almost pissed himself laughing at Stern being arrested and also added that he always knew he was a horrible bastard)_

_And we still had to deal with the wannabe super villains—whenever, where-ever a super-hero turns up a super villain, or its wannabe, always showed up soon after. _

_Mutants still wasn't being given fair rights, Sentinels were being built and all-out war was going to come soon, I knew. _

_I had made Bucky promise to find and save Wanda and Pietro, I made up a will with Phil that left most of my things with Clarice and James, a notebook filled with everything I knew about James Logan was left for Logan._

_I prepared myself as I almost sensed my death coming near, I wanted things to be ready if I did die. _

_Perhaps I was being paranoid, I didn't really care._

* * *

**_AN: Right, next chapter will probably be the last of Hope's life. Now I have questions,_**

**_Should I start her life in the 1930s-1940s so she grows up being the same age as Charles and Erik? If I do, who should I get her to grow up with Charles and Raven or Erik?_**

**_Should I start her life in the 1970s and on-wards?_**

**_Or should I start her life so she's the same age as Rogue, Bobby and Kitty?_**

**_Which would you like to see?_**


	12. Chapter 12

_The day I died was like any other day really. I woke up resting on Bucky, we went to train with Steve, Clint and Natasha before heading to eat in Tony's fancy kitchen where Bruce would cook for everyone—he always made us have a shower before we ate though and used that time to get Tony into the kitchen so he actually ate something._

_It was a normal day, no wannabe super villains or criminals that needed to be tracked down, SHIELD mess was slowly being cleaned up. _

_It should have been a good day, a normal day for once in our fucked up lives. But Fate was the biggest Bitch in the world and enjoyed fucking with me._

* * *

Hope rolled her eyes as she heard Tony and Steve bicker, Steve wanted Tony to stop playing with one of his tablets—probably designing something that he shouldn't—as he wanted the team to have some bonding time.

She was just about to take a sip of her orange juice when the screaming started and the glass slipped out of her suddenly limp hand and smashed on the floor as her hands clapped over her ears and she almost screamed.

Panicked, fearful screaming echoed in her head, psychically calling for help for anyone they knew. Irma, Phoebe and Celeste's (The Cuckoo Triplets) and Ruth's (Blindfold) voices screamed for her help as panicked images filtered through her mind of the school being attacked.

"—ope! Hope!" she vaguely heard familiar voices call but she was too focused on the horror that was being brutally shoved into her mind.

_**Hope, **_Charles' voice cut off the onslaught of images and she could breathe freely again. _**We need you.**_

_Clarice, _was her answer and a small hum in the back of her head told her that Xavier had understood.

She opened her eyes and found herself staring into Bucky's eyes, so close that she could see the hint of green in the otherwise blue depths. She didn't even have to say anything, he knew and his face tightened brief and he pressed a quick kiss on her forehead before he let her go, knowing he could possibly be letting her go forever, and turned to tackle Steve—Steve being the only one that could take Bucky barrelling into him without breaking a few ribs—and thus ripping the attention away from her.

Her feet shifted and she barely heard Natasha's voice—raised and hurried—as the Russian realised what was happening as she raced towards the window that Tony had once been thrown out of.

"HOPE!" her name was shouted by different voices as she leaped towards the window, one of Clarice's portals appearing just before she crashed through the glass, for a brief moment she was both deaf and blind and then she was falling, free-falling from the sky, and she braced herself as she hit the ground with earth-shattering force.

Her landing had made a massive breach in ground and plain metal faces turned to her and fury burnt through her veins as she stared at the faceless killer robots that had dared to attack her home, attack her family.

* * *

_When you're in the heat of a battle, especially a battle for the lives of your family, you don't really take notice of much. You don't take notice of the wounds that you've gained, you don't take notice to how slowly they were healing as you threw yourself again and again at the Sententials that were attacking._

_I guess that was why I was so surprised by my coming death. I hadn't noticed the signs until it was staring at me in the face._

* * *

Hope gurgled blood as she stared down in almost surprise at the spear of metal that was piercing through her body and Rogue stared with wide-eyes up at the form of her friend that had just saved her life.

There was something different in Hope's expression as she stared down at the wound, blood slipping out of her parted lips, and Rogue inched forward—only partly aware of Logan being thrown at the Sentential that had attempted to kill Rogue and had hurt Hope—as Hope fell, knee buckling under her weight and falling into Rogue's arms with a choked cry of pain.

"Hope?" Rogue's voice was pitched high in her panic and fear as she cradled her friend close and brushed dark curled locks out of her pale face with a gloved hand. "Hope? What's wrong?"

"I'm," she choked on blood as she stared up at Rogue with wide mismatched eyes. "I'm not healing."

* * *

_How many times I had wished for the release of death? How many times did I go under Duerr's knife with the half-hearted hope that my heart would finally give out? _

_I had never consider killing myself like Simon had done so many years ago. Suicide wasn't an option to me as I had learnt to survive and had honed my survival instinct over the years—I wouldn't be a coward and fall victim to my own fear._

_I had lived for ten years in this world, I have learnt to be brave in the face of fear, and in the face of what could be certain death to another 'normal', and I have learnt to be cruel and ruthless in my need to survive and to protect the people I had come to care about._

_I have waded into war, fought against aliens, and had blood staining my hands and leaving its mark on my soul._

_I had been called a murderer—true—and a hero—I'm no-one hero—and many names over the ten years I had lived in this world and this was how I was going out?_

_At least I wouldn't die alone, Rogue would be with me and perhaps I could actually do something heroic in my final moments—or perhaps it is just as selfish as I have become. I knew Rogue's future, knew she would be long dead before Logan went back and fixed things in the seventies. Perhaps I could give her a fighting chance against this metal monsters?_

* * *

Rogue was startled by Hope's warm hand on her bare cheek and her eyes widened as she moved to remove it before she finished her off for the Sentential—whenever she got too emotional she lost some control of her power and Hope knew that.

"Don't," Hope choked out. "Take it all, protect as many as possible and live, please?"

So Rogue just held her and rocked as her veins started to stick out with a sickly grey hue and it seemed the very colour of her hair drained as life slowly began to leave Hope's unique duo-coloured eyes and didn't flinch from the battle happening around them—nothing mattered at the moment.

Slowly Hope's hand fall limply though Rogue clutched it tightly as she began to rock the still body of one of her best friends and cried.

"Ah've got you," Rogue whispered hoarsely into curly hair. "Ah'll live, for you. Ah promise. You will be remembered."

* * *

There was something about finding Rogue cradling Hope's still body that stirred something deep in his memories, but Logan didn't care as he fell to his knees next to 'his' kids and wrapped his arms around them.

Hope's head lolled to one side, her gaze vacant and distant in her final death, and Rogue sobbed harder as Logan gently reached out to close Hope's eyes—she wasn't coming back from this death, he knew and part of his heart wretched at the thought that this young woman, so like what he thought his own blood daughter would be like if he ever had one, never waking up again.

"Come on, Kid," Logan said after a while but she stubbornly shook her head and held Hope tighter like she was afraid that Hope would disappear if she let go.

"Rogue!" Bobby called out as he rushed towards them, his steps faltering before fully halting as he caught sight of exactly what—and more importantly who—Rogue was cradling. "Oh god, Hope!"

Hope had never been one they had thought would fall in battle, she was like Logan in a way, seen as totally immortal and able to heal from anything. And yet, there she lay in Rogue's arms and she was dead, she was gone and she wasn't coming back.

* * *

Tony Stark had threated the whole of America if they dared to unleash any Sententials during Hope's funeral with destruction and had promised he would sell every weapon he made to America's enemies if he did find them any were—Captain America standing silently by his side added more fear to the threat as the Good Captain didn't even attempt to stop his billionaire team-mate as he made his very public threats.

Her plain coffin had been covered with flowers and was carried by Hank, Logan, Thor, Bucky, Steve and James.

There was no priest, no church, Hope was to be buried in the place she felt at home. She was to be buried at Xavier's.

Rogue was numb as she watched them placed gently down Hope's coffin and took their seats, Bobby's comforting cool arm wrapped around her and Logan reached out to squeeze her hand as he passed her.

"Hope was a remarkable woman," Xavier began to the mixture of mutants, superheroes and few normal humans in front of him. "Who suffered greatly in her life though never stopped loving people, she was one of us despite whatever she thought and she was family. People—even some amongst us—would call her hero, a title she'll have to accept in death that she never did in life.

She was brave in a way that should inspire us, fierce when it came to those she loved and fighting for a cause she truly believed in." Xavier paused briefly as he gazed out at the sea of faces in front of him, all holding their own type of grief. "I will not lie as say she was a fault-less woman or that she was perfect as I know Hope would never appreciate me lying to make her seem better.

She was selfish and she could be cruel, but her cruelty, her ruthlessness and her selfishness was something that life taught her and kept her alive so no one should fault her for that. She raged against the world that cared little for the suffering that happened under their very noses, she raged against cruel men that had changed her and she fought to protect people—though she would always claim she was fighting for herself alone.

I will say she was kinder than she thought, that she was a good woman, and she will be sorely missed from our lives. I dearly hope she'll have a peace she was denied in this life."

Rogue didn't remember standing or walking to the front but she must have as she was staring at a sea of faces, half she only knew from Hope's memories.

"It was clear Hope was different from the first time Ah met her," Rogue began. "She didn't shy away from us despite how the world looked down at us and treated us, she took it in her stride in a way no non-mutant has ever done. She didn't care what our mutation was, if it showed in a way that made the world look at us as freaks, she would barely blink before introducing herself and acting like normal—Ah think that's why so many of us loved her.

Once you earned her loyalty, Ah don't think you ever really could lose it. She was one of my best friends and never cared about my power, often touching me bare handed if Ah was hurt so Ah could heal like she could always with a smirk or a smile on her face as she batted my hands away.

She cared more deeply than she let on," Rogue's hand absently drifted up to touch the side of her head. "She went through so much that Ah am only now realising, but she didn't falter and she kept on going.

Hope foresaw a horrible future, one Ah am inclined to agree with because of latest events, and in her final moments made sure to give me her strength so Ah could live through all of this and protect as many as Ah could. And Ah will, if only for her." Rogue paused as she placed her hand down. "She had powers that she didn't want, went through stuff no one should go through, but she fought against anyone that threated the world and those she loved. Ah will do the same."

* * *

_Death was meant to be the end, the end of Life, of pain and suffering. I had already known that it wasn't always true and yet I had thought I deserved that type of Death. But yet again I was denied._

_Death's just the next great adventure, huh Dumbledore? Well I didn't sign up for this shit._

* * *

**_AN: And that's the end of Hope's adventure and onto her next life, at the moment I don't think I'll write out her life in the Pokémon world, which she will have, and I'll just go on to her life as a mutant. Her mutation will be Regenerated Healing by the poll results._**

**_Sorry it took so long but I have just discovered the wonders of Skyrim. _**


End file.
